how I never once woke
in a hall, on a porch step,
but always outside, bare feet
slick with dew-grass, the house
deeper shadow, while above
moon leaning its round shoulder
to the white oak’s limbs, stars thrown
skyward like fistfuls of jacks.
Rising as if from water
the way dark lightened, it all
slow-returning, reluctant,
as though while I’d been sleeping
summoned away to attend
matters other than a child’s
need for a world to be in.
Woodshed in Watauga County
Leaking in the one window,
candle shallow, then deepened,
caught-light gathered on gray planks
like a bowl filling slowly,
a simmer of late summer
distilled to dull yellow glow,
thickening air like honey
as mud daubers and dust motes
drifted above like moments
unmoored from time, and the world
and the sun aligned, grew still.
Junk Car in Snow
No shade tree surgery could
revive its engine, so rolled
into the pasture, left stalled
among cattle, soon rust-scabs
breaking out on blue paint, tires
sagging like leaky balloons,
yet when snow came, magical,
an Appalachian igloo
I huddled inside, cracked glass
my window as I watched snow
smooth pasture as though a quilt
for winter to rest upon,
and how quiet it was—the creek
muffled by ice, gray squirrels
curled in leaf beds, the crows mute
among stark lifts of branches,
only the sound of my own
white breath dimming the window.
Time Flow
Green plush of bank moss, a smell
like after rain, and the creek
deepening behind the shed
where Nolan White spent his time
to wedge hours and seconds
out of time, free them to spill
out the open door as if
another current flowing
through the pool where I sank worms
to raise watery rainbows.
His one son had died, so now
he worked alone, making clocks
for Boone tourists. Once I laid
down my tackle, stepped inside
a moth-swirl of ticks and chimes,
at the center lathed chestnut
laid upon two sawhorses,
what Nolan White bent over,
hands dipping in, attentive
as a surgeon as he set
each gear in place. When it stirred
he brought me close, let me hear
that one pulse among many.
The Wallet
Knee deep in the Watauga’s
rock leaping whitewater,
my brother loses his balance,
his life if our father
doesn’t flail downstream
swimming air, running river,
tripping on stones to collar
his son, drag to a sandbar,
confirm with tentative fingers
his empty back pocket.
We pace back and forth on the shoreline,
down to the bridge, the other bank
before the sun finally falls
blurring the river in darkness,
my father not saying, don’t worry,
a life is priceless, not saying
something like that, not tousling
my brother’s hair and smiling.
For this is October. My father
believes he’ll be fired soon,
will face winter’s cold coming
without thirty-four washed-away dollars.
Myopia
They belonged to the mother
of my grandmother, removed
the morning she died, each lens
a clear coin, arms and rims
tarnished
