The Empty Tarmac of a Long-Abandoned Airport: 23 Poems about Separation
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But He’s a Good Boy, Anyway
(Off to find herself, she meets resistance to her quest.)
“Sit with me, mother
He said
“Before you go off to gather ghosts
Before you try to hide your pain
In miles
From us.”
“I’ve been still too long,” I said
“Too many night, too many lifetimes
At a kitchen table
Wondering who was wrong
And who had closed
So many old doors in my life”
“How can you not imagine this will not end
In a thirty-dollar motel room
Watching some all-night news
A thousand miles further
From your only son?
Stay here. With us.”
Yes, I thought, and
Too soon I will be
Last summer’s waves
On last summer’s shores
Last week’s sunlight
On a garden wall
Yesterday’s child
Dancing in the rain
“There are too many cobwebs upstairs,” I said, getting up
“There are too many moldy boxes in dusty rooms
I’ll send you a postcard.”
****
How Do Souls Become Lost?
pan the scene:
empty pine chairs
chairs mark our lives
these look bewildered
squandered ruined abandoned
when a person leaves a kitchen chair
never to return
it's time to call an archeologist
****
How do People Get Separated?
Maybe the train whistle
Breaks the night like
A hammer shatters glass
You wake up, sweating
Wondering why
You didn’t buy a ticket
Too
Maybe you rush to the window:
Outside only dark leaves
Tapping the pane
And a vanishing sound.
****
Does God Care?
we had a brass bed:
they were popular, then
and a wonderful quilt, bought
from the Mennonite auction
if God cared
there would be warnings
on brass beds
****
Why is the Church Silent?
I went to the same church
for my unwedding
the place dark, no people
crowding the pews, wishing me well
I dropped a bill into a can
blew out somebody's candle
walked, old, into the street
****
When is it Funny to be a Slave?
"No," she said, the last yellow
Leaves of poplars dancing
Around her feet,
"No."
I tried to tell her what I knew, that
Laughter is made of strings.
"They've paved Florida," I told her instead
My hands in my pockets
"Can't pave warmth," she said
Kicking the leaves,
"I'll sit on the beach
Watch the kids flying their kites."
I lost a kite like that, once
The string snapping
The kite soon gone
Me, wailing after it.
I don't believe it flies
Forever
But the kite never listened
Either.
****
Ashes
I always fled flames
Till they caught me, now I know
I really feared ashes
****
What Must We Never Let The World Forget?
“I could bring over some cookies,” I said
“Go to hell,” she said.
“It might be better than the silence, you know,” I said
“Go to hell,” she said.
“Chocolate cookies,” I answered.
“Go to hell,” she said.
So I did as she said, and we ate twenty-two cookies that afternoon.
****
By the Red River
A small red dragonfly
Sunning its wings
On a willow trunk
By the river
Dozens of new shoots
From the deftly-sawed stump
Some of us need roots in a storm
Some need wings in the sunlight
If you try to have both
You must lift the world
****
Taking a Trip to the Past
“Bad disease,” she told me
“You walk around
With your head facing back
Do that, you’ll trip
Over the future.
****
About the Poems
The poems are mostly from two of my books, The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer and Lollie Heronfeathers Singer in the Tavern of Lost Souls.
The Minor Odyssey of Lollie Heronfeathers Singer is a collection of poems about a middle-aged woman, divorced, who takes a trip to check out her aboriginal ancestry. It’s available as a book from Amazon.
In Lollie Heronfeathers Singer in the Tavern of Lost Souls, four poets meet at midnight in a dingy tavern once a month at the dark of the moon. Each month, they bring a poem to answer a question (sometimes a nonsense question). To get an electronic copy, email lennypoet@hotmail.ca.