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Honest Days
I know the whistle of wind
curling through corn
on its winding way, have seen
it flutter and tease the husks
and say goodbye, have heard
the hidden yellow call
its rain to return, needing
one more touching.
I know the contact of thumb
on tobacco leaf, the tender rub
of nurture on its heavy green,
have felt that fatherly flick of skin
before sunbeams sat
on the eyes of men who do
their weighty work in cool shade.
I have cut the hickory for barn fires
that turn that grass hue brown
with smoke, have lit the match
that fosters change, snapped
the stems that feed a nation
and run for pails to moat their base
with drink. The source of life
is in those toils and touchings
and pourings, the incorruptible
probe of dirt and the knowing
that your fibrous sons and daughters
who you care for in the dark,
boots crusted and hands cracked,
will rise through mud
toward the light of other children.
Born Too Late
I sense a dearth of truth, a loss
of piety. The buttons are too easy,
the character of cobblestones buried
by black. The blessed sheen of sweat
on holy fieldsmen and fruit peddlers
now dried like parchment on the brows
and smirks of small men
who do not know, have never
known, and will not know
the honest feel of plows that plant
and scythes that cut their supper.
There is no real blood here
on city streets, blood
that means, blood
that talks, blood
that tells stories that matter.
Of course there are stains.
Heartmarks and pains. Someone
who delayed too long lacing his shoe
met a trailer in this very spot, driven
by a hurried man late on rounds. But
that blood you stand on now
with your Italian leather
does not hold nor challenge
the red and godly grace
of a Tennessee field, where
just yesterday, coincidentally
at that very same hour, a black man's
bones were swallowed by the blades
of his harvester as he bent,
carelessly,
to lift his summer wheat.
Renaming the Streets
The lanterns of Atlantic horizon know
times are hard tonight. They have
gone soft and filmy like sad eyes.
You light a cigarette and stare off
into the bones of its orbits
as if answers are there. The blurred
edges grow wet. The empathetic
moon casts a copper beam for
the lampkeeper to lean on and cry.
The sea smokes with you, a hazy
unison of brothers grieving a passing,
steam rising off the far ocean waters
as if Europe were in flames again.
This kind of mourning,
socket to socket with the sky,
demands new signs on boulevards,
fresh faces on coins. Names
must be changed when life is this new,
could not be more different if
a president were lost, or a preacher
who changed the world gunned down
in the parking lot of a seedy motel.
You want her remembrance at street corners,
red lights, in the pockets of strangers.
And you want no witness as you enter
the dark sea, only enlightenment
on which way to go as you swim
and the dawn breaks
over your thoughts and secrets,
back to shore
or east,
to touch those far eyes.
One Day in December
Trembling in the closing arms
of winter, so many hands
to clothe your numbness, warm you
as they dab frost from your cheeks
and forehead, brand you
with their cuddling love.
The hour of ice.
The final snow before
the frightening dogs of December
call you home with their muscular barks,
howling from incessant hunger, cold
and selfish in their lust.
Tomorrow
they plant a stone for you,
white marble, to bear
your name and numbers,
but now is your moment
of warmth and glory
as the flesh ropes of your daughters
and their daughters, remarkable forest
of your seed, wrap you
like flaming vines
and lower you gently down.
Fighting the Sun
The salty smell of supper ham ordains
the evening, preaches to a mass
of slump and slumber in the rolling
chair. Livestock fed and beans tended,
sunbeams swallowed by crickets, night
is called from its shy window by silence
after snaps of barn locks, greeted
by inanimate squeaks of pain
as Matthew's girth bends the wood
of his rocker. Suspenders and grimy
bootlaces hang loose, flopping medals
of plight and pride. Pipe smoke spins
through porch screens in blue corkscrew
ease, teasing the fading day with curls
of relaxation. Telling the dark to come,
the stars to shine, reminding the sleepy
sun its reign is over, its torture muted
by pauses and powders of satisfaction.
Informing it that night, no matter how
adjacent, is not complicit in its crimes.
Patrick Carrington --A Pushcart-nominated poet and native of New York City, he teaches creative writing in New Jersey. He is the poetry editor for the art & literary journal Mannequin Envy. Carrington's poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, most recently The New Hampshire Review, The Roanoke Review, Rosebud Magazine, Confrontation Magazine, The Marlboro Review, The DMQ Review, Pearl, The Raintown Review, and Mobius. His first book-length collection, Rise, Fall and Acceptance, is from Main St. Rag Press, 2006. Check it out here: Mainstreetrag.com/store (October 2006)
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