Month: March 2012

_Passage_

He gestured somewhat
grandly
and coffee sloshed the rim
of his mug like a tsunami
done in small.
“The world I have traveled
is not round,” he said musingly,
“it is not round”
and contemplated drowning grounds,
divining the future
from the wake of catastrophe.
His face fell into ruin
and he swam away
into a brief ocean–
the images of a life
spread upon the waves.
As he drifts now,
he believes himself wood,
current-charted,
hungry,
unwilling
to wash ashore

Passage poem copyright Rebecca Jackson

I have an obsession with time
and tick tocking clocks tremble at my touch,
tickle my thought.
The people in the street notice it
little,
and when they do…with regret and sadness,
Greenness and water…brownness and decadence
and again the same.
How quant and soft,
And sleeping children turn into proud men
And soft dreams at night and morning crisply cupping coffee.
I sigh softly at such times
and touch morning with welcome fingers.
I am not afraid of time as brown leaves and dying men
turn full circle,
and trembling fingers brown with age,
and fond memories of time were
so gently smiling, I turn my thoughts to the morn,
I remember all.
I regret
nothing

Woodcutting

I am sore from woodcutting.
Sawdust covers the grass.
smells like the oak I have just finished cutting.
My hands still feel the chainsaw.
My shoulders are tired.
I have stacked the wood in a pile
as high as a man, between a walnut
and a pine.
The wood settled among itself,
converging into its own plane,
to wait for winter.
To wait for me
to carry it to the house in
armloads

Woodcutting Poem copyright Wayne Jackson 1989