The Empty Tarmac of a Long-Abandoned Airport: 23 Poems about Separation Read online

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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

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  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 [email protected].