Rail travel

Rain, Steam and Speed-The Great Western Railway

Life between the rails

the price paid for rhythm

that works its way

into the conversation we’ll have

with the couple from Kamloops

over drinks in the bar car

elongated shadows of stem ware

clocking ever so slightly

across snow white prairie  

dotted with one stoplight words

nothing more

than a few boarded up syllables

struggling vowels of a diner slash package store

the emphatic final consonants

of grain elevators

trailing off into long stretches of silence

stealing glimpses

of the future on grand sweeping curves

while the past

rifles through our pockets

on the perfect parallel track

of the here and now.   

Last Inning

Night Game, 1964

The murk in the lot west of Trumbull

smears Tiger Stadium to a smudge on the page

buckled newsprint damp to the touch.

Gauzy chrome in drunken coils  

snakes around the swarming cars

molting engine blocks

tick to crescendo in metallic meadows

that collar the castle

a sweating layer cake

oozing a scrim of grimy icing

inhaling a parade of ants through open pores.

There’s green

then there’s the green

framed in the gaping mouth of the tunnel

where we emerge bathed in light

a cottony chemical glow

tainting horizons way out Michigan Avenue

backlighting the skyline

from the steps of Scott Fountain.

A coal black usher

in a red striped shirt

flips our green seats down

four gunshot cracks wiped clean

with a snow white rag. 

Raptured pills of high pop flies

leave me behind with the unsaved multitudes

our faces beaming heavenward

while Pharisees proclaim

the holy host in paper cups

up and down the sweat slick steps

of the temple. 

song cycle

Cicada

I emerge gulping daylight

the buttery pat of loam

cocked on my head

a mortar board

tasseled with worms

tepidly applauding my graduation

from seventeen years in isolation

clutching this yellow legal pad

brimming with broad leaves of longhand

trailing creeping marginalia

to accompany your fricative improvisations

scatting the words to our pastoral

dusk ripe and bursting

from the carapace of an August day.

Taking Wing

Short Fiction

Before sitting down to write a story

I’ll think up a character with a few

miles on him but not so many to put

him to sleep by nine, leaving our eager

third person narrator little to do

but describe the layout of the bedroom;

furniture of uneven pedigree

clutter enough to suggest spiritual

disarray well within acceptable

limits but worth keeping a close eye on

opining sotto voce a second

character, someone with a few hours

to kill in Wiesbaden or Banda Aceh

poling a spoon through black coffee gone cold

in a spider vein cup, the slightest shift

of a knee twisting the plot around the

discovery of a memory stick

taped to the underside of his café

table, Marnie-LA labeled in red. 

I write some muscular verbs to wrestle

him onto to the overnight train to Split

and shift to an unreliable first

person singular narrator who finds

himself wincing into a coffee cup

at daybreak, words crumpled in heaps outside

confused by their reflections in the window.

Atlas, pass the ketchup

Picnic Table

The locust posts

he found peeled clean

lopped in six foot logs

on the rundown farm

behind blowsy fence rows

where his mother was born

trespass a tangy note

to cut the sweet cloy of larceny

sweeter still to feature

Papa Wear railing red

in the sweet by and by

elastic drawl reduced to ash

Scots Irish burr

coaxed back to life

tender green oaths

up in shoots through the burn.

Cedar plank branded

with bore holes

four inch lag bolts

to bite and hold

spar varnish lavished

on knot and grain

ship in a bottle

for a man

with oars for hands

heart a deep draft keel.

Life ain’t no picnic

so my father

built a table

to last an eternity.

Once

I watched him

tip the table top

onto his back

grip the edges

below the center of gravity

rise in a stoop

like a mythical beast

spiked with locust posts

and waltz the table

down the block

to a neighbors backyard

where picnickers covered

his metaphor

with a red checked table cloth

and pointed him toward the cooler.