Month: December 2011

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Crossing Wales

This entry is part 3 of 29 in the series Conversari

Facing backwards on the train
like a waxing moon, hidden wheel
of my belly a little wobbly,
I watch the hills pile up, blueing
as the gulf between us grows.
Who knows when or if I’ll pass
this way again? And then
I focus on the close-at-hand,
& realize all this time
I’ve been staring straight through
the reflection of a girl
who faces forward, pale
& attentive, hair the color
of autumn fields. We slow
down. The intercom crackles.
A station platform assembles itself
around us & stops, & the doors
slide open. What place is this
whose name requires two
clearings of the throat?

*

See the photographic response by Rachel Rawlins, “eye.”

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Debris

This entry is part 44 of 63 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2011

“What patience a landscape has, like an old horse,
head down in its field.” ~ Denise Levertov

Through the grass, through the tall weeds, brush fires; then winds that blow their alarms, lapping at everything in their path. There go the trees. There go the boxy houses. There go the railroad tracks, yanked like bones from the back of a fish. What else could they eat in a trice? Only the weeds smudged close on the earth escape notice; or the insubstantial calculus of stones. Months later you’ll find a charred copper penny, a mangled boot; the bones of small animals and their grainy reproach.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.