Two Poems

Glue

Thursday was the day
that was not, his day, to die
though the hours
were out to cause trouble.

He forgot glue on the first trip.
The second drive home from the store
the lid on the gallon unscrewed inside
the cab of his shiny red pickup.
Glue flowed. A creamy pool
on the seat, ankle deep on the floor,
it coated the rump of the dog.
 
It wasn’t verse the neighbors came
to their windows to see. Four letter words
spit off roofs, green grass, summer plants.
The mail carrier crossed the street. A hose
finally forced the glop out of the open car door.
So sopping wet, car, shoes and all,
he started trip three to the store.

This is the moment:
as he waited his turn to turn, he saw
in the rear-view the towering truck
barreling toward his tail.
“I floored it,”

he said later, after,
the universe
revised his day’s luck.

 

A Storm Window Separates the Room From the Sea Below

At ninety-seven feet high
    the flight deck flares
to a full two hundred and seventy-one feet across.
    Her one thousand seventy-plus foot length
hauls a draft of thirty six feet and displaces
    eighty-one thousand tons:
Tons and tons and tons.
    You’d think an aircraft carrier would never
be able to sneak-on-by
    and yet she glides
elegant as Marie Taglioni rising
    on soft ballet slippers en pointe in La Sylphide.

Behind closed doors upstairs in the red room hushed voices flow softly. Talking talking talking to pacify his insatiable appetite to disarm midnight's of his past, when danger was danger. The moans in his ears

are the size of an ocean. He can’t see the big bed here, the window
 overlooking the sea, these
colored walls’ hideing plumbing humming.  Can’t grasp that now, no rough hairy  hand, no weapon is raising to ruin him more. Only we are here.

Gray steel conceals her four catapults.
    She tucks away her aircraft elevator,
hides rudders, propellers and two,
    thirty ton anchors. The vapor wisps
the air contradicting her power plant’s
    eight boilers. Gray embraces
the gray and mist masks
    her killer intent, enfeebled,
heading for the aircraft carrier infirmary.

It has been, is being, a long war inside and out. In daylight he appears to move  with poise.
The day we met him his exquisite black eyes, black lashes, his song, his lyrical  pastels
concealed his misfiring neurons. We tow him to safety, to port, the
 magnitude sinks us.

—Carol Levin, Seattle, WA

 

Home|Contents|Next