Wild Dreamer
for Ron Jones

They never move. Never. A screen door
slams. When I look again, they're
in different places. Clouds blend into gray,
I sniff the wind for shape, I know this place.

We ran. I delighted in their giggles
but went too far. At home, a shadow
stained the porchlight. Tail under,
I curled up in the corner and tried to sleep.

WHOSE saviour THIS?

Eyes raise from frozen feet,
see only the stubs of cornstalks
and perpetuity stretching beyond.

They brought their gifts then left.

They brought:                a blanket,
                                        a book,
           and a short length of chain.

But none brought gold,
and none brought myrrh.



The Last Thylacine
for Carolyn Smale

The shepherds rest
but never tire of herding,

lips greased with mutton
and warm

beneath the Crux
until the bleating

wakes them
from beds of autumn leaves.

Then armies of staves
rattle through the brush,

drum life from every beast
be it wolf, cat or ginny possum.



Where There Is Gravity

The full moon
leaves its legacy
in poet scribbles.

For a few days
each month, words
carefully formed
glow in electrum light,
pulled--but never felt--
by a powder gray core.

Too--yet not so--
this word, scribbled
in crayon:

DADDY



The Brown Room

A mouse nibbles
in a corner of the brown
room.

Unseen, it gnaws
loud enough to crush

the table, the chair
and the bare bulb.



Gaia

She takes them all--

autumn's dull foil,
the limbs of rotting elms,
a scattering of bones--

and tucks them in the pocket
of her stone-cold womb.



Early Autumn

She comes to me

in the place where
the traces of gilding
linger,

to share embers
on a cooling hearth

and feel the downward tug
of slow, sure passing.



Cheat

Cheat is a river--
random, perpetual--
a slow nibbler
and swift thief.

The dead force
of her soiled lace
cascades
down slickthighs,
rumbles
at her feet,
then smooths
to thinning jets.

She flings her spectrum
arcing
to the mist.



Bel Air

As the wheels drop
away from her body

and springs release
their massive weight,

she breathes one breath.



Advance

A crisp itch of ivy
creeps beyond
the tree line
where we picnic,

where my pleas
and your surrender
meet with folly.



Captured Asteroids

Galileo knew
distractions whirl about one's head,
and so he went about his work
atop forward-leaning Pisa
tracking the nightly arcs
of Medicean stars.
The moons of a red planet
were much too small
to see, let alone feel.



Lucky One

Mine is a patron hand
to clasp on greeting
and not let go, friendlier

than a cat, than a comb
to knotted hair, a brush
to a dusty coat--though
these he owns--with boots
indifferent to the bones,
how they crunch and clatter.

"You do not look well," I say,
"let's turn back. I fear
you'll catch your death
of cold. Tomorrow, surely
Luchresi will know."



All poems on this website are the intellectual property ofRodney Armstrong and are protected by copyright.