Thresholds and Other Poems. Matt Hohner

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Thresholds and Other Poems - Matt Hohner

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numbness,

      has followed him on two different buses,

      across district lines, into the good school

      where his mother lied to get him away from it.

      He had turned the corner,

      but the world he left behind now sits

      at the third desk back on the right,

      its shadow eclipsing his eyes.

      To A Poet of the Three Gorges

      It is evening: cold wind, late November,

      east side of Baltimore’s harbor. In the display

      window of an upscale home furnishings

      boutique, an old wooden ox cart wheel,

      circa 19th century China, mounted

      on an iron stand: prized salvage

      from the flooded towns and valleys where

      the Yangtze carved deep into millennia,

      cascading through culture and time.

      I think of Du Fu, turning his ear

      to the gibbons’ howls reverberating

      deep in the three gorges, his skiff

      moored along the shore, verses coming

      like lanterns at night, borne by the dark currents,

      lifeblood of heritage, surging past his bow.

      Downstream, a new power flows from the river,

      its megawatt hum echoing off concrete ramparts.

      The old voices, now whispers, drown in waters

      rising to light cities of millions where, once,

      men in simple wooden boats and carts

      delivered the news one verse at a time.

      Gulf War Veteran

      When he returned

      from the desert,

      a former high school

      classmate brought home

      an extra pair of ears,

      each taken from

      confirmed kills.

      He talked of stars’

      brilliance through

      night vision lenses,

      of breathing acrid smoke

      from the well fires

      and coughing up

      globs of blood and oil,

      of scorpions seeking

      drops of moisture

      in soldiers’ mouths

      and stinging their tongues

      as they slept.

      Part of me died

      that evening

      when I saw him.

      He never returned

      from that war.

      Under the Leonids

      Two a.m., twenty-five degrees. Shivering on a

      roadside between open fields on top of a hill,

      I gaze east and up at November’s mute fires,

      magnesium streaks quick-etched across the night,

      their glowing trails hanging like tiny hosannas of light

      before dissolving back to heaven. Farther from earth,

      satellites zip from horizon to horizon in silent orbit.

      On the cold wind, a soft whiff of nitrates and damp soil

      swirls with wood fire smoke from nearby farm houses.

      The distant low roar of a passenger jet rises and falls.

      Somewhere, a dog barks at deer shuffling through

      the corn stubble. Minute under the vast and endless

      river of stars, I watch with gratitude as sparks shoot

      from the Lion’s mane, heavenly travelers hurtling

      through the darkness of time to crash hot to earth,

      brief glories scratching the hours like static, fading

      swift as dreams the moment we wake. Their ions,

      like knowledge, linger to tease, then are gone.

      Toward Pittsburgh

      Night falls between mountain ridges,

      open car windows and headlights on,

      lullaby of tiresong beside cow farms,

      faded Mail Pouch Tobacco billboard

      painted on the side of an old barn.

      Fragrant alfalfa breath of summer

      darkness settles like gossamer hands

      enfolding a postage-stamp grass meadow,

      edge of the woods by the interstate

      south of Breezewood and the Turnpike;

      U2’s “Promenade” pulses low on the car stereo,

      and you, behind the wheel, steady as years.

      Light by quiet light, Edward Hopper’s America

      nestles into its small, white, box houses,

      blue glow of computer and TV screens

      spilling out through upstairs bedroom curtains.

      Slide show, seaside town. Coca-cola, football radio,

      radio, radio, radio, radio, radio …

      Thin fog hugs the farm fields’ edges;

      fireflies glitter the treetops:

      hold

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