No Gathering In of this Incense. Mark Rhoads

      Acknowledgments

      “Short Block,” “Singing Dylan,” and “Fishing” first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor.

      “Our Old Chevy,” “Plantain,” and “The Occasional Fire” were first published in The Deronda Review.

      “Telecom’s Bequest,” “Vital Meaning,” “Legacy,” and “Action Still” first appeared in Contemporary Rhyme.

      “Main Street” first appeared in Ballard Street Poetry Journal.

      No Gathering In of this Incense

      Poems

      Copyright © 2015 Mark Rhoads. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-0298-5

      EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-0299-2

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      Part One: Iconic Virtue

      Daily I search those eyes, the windows

      through which I see their future, my past, all at once.

      Our Old Chevy Had No Radio

      Our old Chevy had no radio,

      no conditioned air, no seatbelts

      to tie you down; so I would spread my arms

      to rise out over the treeless hills,

      top the pungent sage and rippling wheat,

      then swoop back over the rocketing hood,

      glance back into the divided glass

      to see my determined mother,

      my father commanding the wheel,

      hell-bent for Ritzville.

      My music in those generous days

      was the drone of the straight six below me

      the flutter of hot wind in my boyish ears,

      a clattering escort of grasshoppers,

      a meadowlark singing out a claim

      to a fencepost.

      The Seed of Me

      My father sits on the edge of his bed in a t-shirt

      angling a blue-veined foot into a leg of his pajamas.

      His loins are exposed, the loins

      from which the seed of me burst out

      on a pleasant April night in Canyon Crest,

      and afterwards he swung these feet

      to the floor to sit for a moment, palms

      on the mattress, his toes kneading

      the cool linoleum, then looked back at my mother

      to exchange a commemorative smile.

      But now these pajamas claim his full attention,

      one leg, then the other leg, a forced rest;

      and once over his knees he labors to stand

      to pull them up over his wilted buttocks;

      he falls to the bed, lays his head in dry fingers,

      looks down at the floor for a long, long time

      as if to ponder the history of the old brown carpet.

      Iconic Virtue

      The way my father grips those two dead squirrels

      by their tails and how his left hand extends

      to the barrel-end of a rifle, butt at his feet; and those

      dungarees and the work shirt he is wearing, the way

      he has rolled up his sleeves; and my mother,

      how she stands next to my father in tailored slacks

      and a waste-length sweater; and the way that squirrel

      hangs from her left hand, held by her thumb

      and first two fingers; even how she tucks her thumb

      in under the fingers of her right hand

      as it hangs at her side; and how young they look,

      clowning around in front of this old cabin;

      and how they both smile, draws me as the icon

      of a saint draws the devout to consider the origins

      of a virtue. Daily I search those eyes, the windows

      through which I see their future, my past, all at once.

      Snow

      sifts through a ghostly stand

      of tamarack and tall pine

      that borders the forest road

      and hovers over the bridge

      spanning the creek

      and there is no breeze

      or breath but mine