White Lies
I take the left fork
in the trail to avoid disappointment
and only light my secret
once I have passed the surge
of buttercups on the fringe. I like
to smoke sometimes, but can’t bear
what she would say if she knew.
Up here, the air is ten degrees cooler
and the trail’s edge is littered
with thick tufts of carpet bugle,
and climbing roses strangle the underbrush.
It is cut throat here; they stand on top
of each other for sustenance—reaching
their thorns across a sweet honeysuckle’s
face, bleeding her pale and withered.
One can barely discern where raspberries
begin and roses end, both fruitless now.
Near the end of the paved path
there is a hole in the branches web,
the red of Canadian Columbine catches
my eye as birds dart through for cover.
I am a stranger, upright and un-feathered,
and they call warnings I do not heed.
I am swallowed by conflictions in nature
and the smell of tobacco burning between
my fingers, remembering that she still tells people
how she caught me smoking last summer, just
that once, and it was a mistake.
So now the taste has gone bad, fetid and dirty
in my mouth, head swimming from its rush,
and heart tripping like a hammer. I snub it out
on the concrete before descending back into humidity
and neatly shorn lawns and cookie cutter
buildings, back into reality.
The Funeral March
A bee falls in mid-flight,
days numbered from the beginning
of inception, and it is this moment
when all matters of energy change hands.
Troops of ants in their neat
fastidious lines, methodically
plying the infinitesimal structures
of another species from its still
beating heart, taking death to make life,
carrying a weight in their jaws,
(a milligram may
as well be a mountain)
and this becomes the burden
of their own life span.
Messier 35
For Beto
You recall the memory for me about when your hands
were covered with purple earth, when you cut
your mother's existence into the canvas,
a blossoming repetition you couldn't explain.
Helio came in, unfolded his celestial compass onto the floor;
heavens strewn across the earth almost as amazing as in sky,
and he tells you she is here. A long, slender finger pointing
to a bundle of stars; She is sitting at the foot of Gemini.
And still,
you can feel her hand upon you,
her fingers lightly touching your hair.
You tell this moment with glorified innocence,
taking sun with a tortoise and a dog,
hummingbirds hovering over your face, unafraid and close,
their jeweled bodies reflecting onto oiled skin.
In my winter, I consider how time is the ultimate master;
ordering light at one end of an arm, darkness at the other.
His fingertips great magnets moving worlds
separately until converged in one.
I imagine you lying there on baked earth,
your dark hand resting on the turtle's rough shell,
the dog panting softly in your ear, with birds in your eyes.
You are St. Francis of Assisi calling them,
waiting for the solemn whisper of night
to return your mother home.
He is sending me into the sea
On the water’s edge, where foam
kisses sand and sea glass nestles
between kelp and littered mollusks
until high tide takes their surrender,
he screams into the ocean.
Bottled anger and demon sadness
that is touched with love releases
and scares leery bystanders
up the near empty winter beach;
they scatter like clouds
along the gray horizon.
Winds cut sharply into his face,
tears frozen thick enough
to bore through, memories of warm
hands ice fish into his core,
leaving him somehow less numb
and more human than before.
Salted waves lap against sneakers,
toes getting wet with the beginning
of life and the end of life,
as he gently gathers shells in hand
to give as smiles in another time.
Why it's good to have a place to call home
They let the apartments go this spring,
let contorted eaves remain untouched
after the cataclysm of high winds
destroyed everything like the monstrous
tangle of Medusa's coil.
Swallows arrive en mass building nests
in fissured awnings and on the flat-topped lights
above our green doors. The noise astounds me,
the screeching birds explode at once from their fresh
columbary.
A robin's head pops above the hem
of uncut grass, hunting fat worms in early dew,
riffling wishes from dandelions
and liberating them into the hazy morning.
The parking lot is empty now,
the business men off to lofty glass houses,
stones rattle in the pockets of their gray suits.
They will sit behind sleek, mahogany desks
with the view of the valley unencumbered,
but they'll never have the time or cause
to enjoy it with phones fixed to their ears
and a false assurance in the nod of their heads.
I sit on the curb in the crest
of the circle at ground level
and witness everything missed
on a daily basis--
bird shit and gravel, sun glinting
off the stop sign, jet trails in the blue
and the far off sound of trains on track
that complete this garden utopia
just on the wood's edge.
All Poetry © Copyright Aleathia Drehmer. All rights reserved.
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