"Don't you love the way the wind shakes."
More Perihelion:
Bob Sward's Writer's Friendship Series
My Father's War
Twilight again in the lettuce patch,
my father inside his trailer . . . he sprinkled
dried blood over loose black loam, placed
sheet metal sails like random scratch,
fenced emerald leaves so that even God
could not sigh without jingling a bell
in hell. But still they stole,
the rabbits, gray against false light,
flat land the shape of a hand grenade,
possession only a thumb's width if you held
it up, as he did, looking out expelling
each living thing, but not for long by a long
shot, not the hare of good desire,
not the long long might of trembling wire.
_______________________________________________________________ Press Release
--after James Merrill
A squirrel, no three or four, race among
two ragged oaks and the composition roof
next door -- I sometimes watch with
forward leaning, the euphemism our
Secretary of Defense used yesterday to
explain one method of torture. In this
case, let light shine into the body,
shaft of air and water -- it's time
to leave, to come and go
till clarity of language visits.
Sometimes there's scratching in the wall;
sometimes there are red scarves checking
the branch. What is that clicking,
now making its way into the skull,
now so lulled the ferret salutes like a tongue.
Don't you love the way the wind shakes.
No real wind would raise a hand.
Filaments float by
as if the mind invented them.
A lawn chair tips over,
succumbs to pressure
forward leaning.
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