Suddenly Night
Half an hour ago we were on the front deck, finishing drinks, watching the sun purple the sky, blush clouds, butter golden orange the two softly rounded buttes opposite, birds darting to safe roosts. Suddenly night unrolls its darkening cloth. The first stars proudly lighting the path. Saturn sneaking through the fir tree. Cars are bright dots on the distance road that wriggles the rim of the Columbia river. Bright house lights and insects clicking. A single bat drunk on darkness clatters through its sleepy start. Tree silhouettes filling shrinking spaces, all to be covered. Just Lost Children Two days after Christmas and the cheer has left the driver of Bus 35 from Downtown, Portland. Two young Japanese tourists tenderized into inaction by the driver's beating insistence, voice rising, repetition the only strategy. Your app is wrong. It's wrong. Ladies, listen. It's w-r-o-n-g! Passengers laugh in shared shock, Rosa Parks rising to offer her seat, but only my wife Jill helps, bridging the gap of a tiny percent of genetics that justified internment camps, atomic revenge. Jill acts as intermediate, speaking no Japanese, offering a kind voice, enthusiasm, the fairy magic the softens monsters and makes heroes out of hermits. Problem suddenly fixed, the journey continues, the two Japanese students thankful in high pitched delighted voices of children, just lost children. Never Left I call Berlin home but when called back I make the same assumption: I know my home like the back of my hand. But this hand is too lined, older. I turn it over as I am turned over by the same streets I think I recognize. I mislay my bearings long enough to be young again. My compass is spun ninety degrees east confused by radioactive memory. A giddy tourist, I turn to the map, find the city blurring sounds of the underground, street names like siblings, even the fonts are family, lining for my nest. That wall snaking across my hand, older, more lined. The Singing Sea at Florence, OR No one is with us. No one is playing that instrument, a hollowed bone horn? No, the salty wind humming air over strings of stone, thousands of tons of sea defence boulders hauled in place by bored soldiers. On the abandoned beach beside us the litter of noisy nights when wind drummed hard, waving trunks bleached bone grey; jumbled graveyard, of broken limbs, weathered husks. The haunting humming goes on, the sea listening to its existence echoing inside discarded seashells. A song of salt wind and sand washed percussion; needing no audience, no applause. The Freight Train at Night The young night drips sleep into me. Suddenly a wail waves up six hundred feet from tracks along the far side of the Columbia River. A freight train is slipping through the Gorge, crying through Hood River, headed to Portland. Another wail, a knowing sound that washes over me, resurfacing lost faces seen in dreams, sadness. Fading grumbles, the kilometre of freight tailing off. Night fills me and I sink into the river, searching for the morning. Published in Ginosko 20#, 2018.
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Poetry Biography:I have had over 70 poems published in the following worldwide magazines and literary journals: A Handful of Stones, Acta Victoriana (Canada), All the Sins (UK), The Amethyst Review (USA), Amsterdam Quarterly (NL) The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bolts of Silk, Borderless Journal, The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Bushfire Literature & Arts Review (US), Cadenza, Cake Magazine, Carillon, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), DASH (USA), Clackamas Literary Review (USA), Cooch Behar Anthology, Dawntreader, Dreamcatcher, The Dillydoun Review, Earth Love, The Ear (US), Eastlit (East Asia), Erbacce, Envoi, Finger Dance Festival, Ginosko, Gloom Cupboard, Hidden Channel, Inlandia Journal, IS&T (Ink, Sweat & Tears), Into the Void (Canada), The Journal, The Lakeview Journal (India), Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lunch Ticket (USA) The New Writer, One Hand Clapping, Orbis, Oregon English Journal (USA), The Passage Between, Prole, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sonic Boom (India), Third Wednesday (USA), Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), New Contrast (South Africa), One Hand Clapping, Opportunity Publishing, The Oregon English Journal (USA) Origami Poems Project (USA), The Paddock Review (USA), Panoplyzine (USA), Paper Swan Press, The Passage Between, The Peacock Journal (USA), Pens on Fire, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Potomac Review, (USA) Prole, Pulsar Poetry, Rear View Poetry, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Qutub Minar Review (India), Red Ink, Shiela-Na-Gig (USA), South Bank Poetry Magazine, Stand, Waterford Teachers Centre, (Ireland) We Are a Website New Literary Journal (Singapore), Weber - The Contemporary West Review (USA), Windfall (USA), Writing Magazine, Words for the Wild and Verbal Art (India). Archives
March 2024
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