Poetic Hours Online Autumn 2008 |
Richard Luftig |
Suggestion Out at the edge of town Each farm houses tilts to the west trying to catch first hint of whatever the wind is thinking. Night comes and the windows go dark one by one. Midnight rain barely touches each singular pane making no sound save for saddened hints, brief breaths, of prior lives. I Italian Harbour This jazz wind blows sidebars- sharps and flats over reeds and cattails in counterpoint to the town. Off on the pier, old men lean in pairs, hands buried deep in pockets, anchoring their arms to their sides or clutching their wrists behind their backs like penitents. Smoking, stopping they peer out to sea or back to the gaunt and splintering boats in search of remembered melodies. They sway in time to the harbour, to the wind going nowhere, everywhere, or simply into town as an afterthought. |
Optimists After so many months of winter's heel pressed hard to the backs of their necks, you'd have thought they'd have learned by now how to lay low in the culverts and stay out of sight. But those first rains of April have a way of making one restless and impatient to be the first to get up and out and show-off your new clothes to the world. I'd love to save them, I really would, but you can't tell an optimist anything. They will persist in poking their noses where they don't belong, not recalling or caring about those should-have-been lessons learned at the dark side of memory, of the not-too-distant smell of diesel being exhaled by the county mower tuned-up and lying in wait. |
