I Am Going

Drawn in reedy shallows
loosely bound to shore
a green rowboat sleeps.

Sometimes at twilight
when the pines grow quiet
and the quarrels of redwings

dim, my grandfather
in vest, silk tie
his workday best

commands the skiff.
Tired, he hardly rows
draws modest circles

on the water's back
casts his long shadow
across the fading light.

In dusk-laced dress
my mother runs through
cooling meadow grass

I am going, she cries
and the boat turns toward land
to meet my father

she cries, and leaps
into the first syllable
of night, a new silence

where only fragments--a shadow
a blackbird's eye, a seat
in the bow--remain.

Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 1992
Poetpourri


Possession

Land of big hearts and wide
shoulders, breadbasket of whole
-some myths, of prairie-vast

Promises, the dispossessed mold
tears into bullets, transmute
fertilizer into vehicles of desire,

Would have us beneath them
glut us in hills of concrete
and glass. Ill-possessed, they

Would drown us in rubble raining
down into our ordinary lives, would
plow old ground where

Ignoble architectures thrive,
where a bullseye like a donkey tail
is pinned perversely to a child.

From cubicles of nine to five
to crosshairs of the prepossessed
who would have thought, who,

That we could so hate ourselves.
the heart's weather churns, mountains
stagger into the sea, the broken plain.

Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 1996
Onion River Review


The View

The blue sky--no summer haze--so quiet high
above the city, soft carpeting, acoustic ceiling,
plate glass walls, where between wingtips traffic
creeps below, pigeons bank deftly on their rounds.

The blue sky, she said, rising from her desk,
coffee cup in hand, taking in her world-its arrogant
uplift of tall buildings, a smooth sea, the river, Jersey
melting finally into the haze west.

The blue sky, yes, he said, hands in pockets, seeking
for a minute diversion outside--a helicopter here
and there, lumbering planes coming and going, tiny jets,
even higher, glinting, outracing their contrails.

The blue sky, the high silences broken slightly, a plane
veers, blunt nose growing, uneven curves of rivets,
the cockpit windows-opaque-the noise, a glimpsed
knowledge, the changed view, the loss, the loss.

Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 2001

Redrawn

They told us didn't they
about the stuff of dreams
that dreams are the finery of desire

shoes for a walk on the wall
a parade of lost ones who appear
for a two-beat eternity

Once dreamer of color and flame
I travel deep now into sepiascapes
where the old wheel turns predictably

In rooms of unlaundered light
stutters the half-daft familiar
as petals of roses burn dry

but storms growl past with lost malice
I can hover lighter than air
and lovers return without asking.

Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 2004
Clockhouse Review

Matter of Faith

Sometimes when Orion ascends
mmmmmand breath hangs before me
mmmmmmmmm like an exposed secret

I feel then the tug of hands
mmmmmthat once scratched our genealogies
mmmmmmmmm on sand, or pressed them into clay

They without doors, or laws
mmmmmor central heat, whose stories spilled out
mmmmmmmmmmin urgent circles stitching together

dreams, uncalendared days
mmmmmremember, they said, casting brands
mmmmmmmmmmlike dying eyes into the hungry night

They said listen--unless we turn
mmmmmthem with our tongues
mmmmmmmmmmour fears are what they seem

My breath becomes crystals of ice
mmmmmthe wind chooses tonight to sleep
mmmmmmmmmmand the earth hardens where I stand

The beast that roars past
mmmm mbears only waste from New Jersey
mmmmmmmmmmAnd Orion unflinching and mute


Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 2005



Bone and Blowdown

Attended only by a bronze
unblinking sun, veiled haze,
locust's fading scream,

Upslope nothing reigns but
crisp birch curls, parched moss,
downed and scattered trees

Where dry blooms bend together,
share a hot breeze, scatter
their near-sweet breath lightly.

My dazed eye records an utter
absence of the honeybee, my pricked
ear nets no call

But of tomorrow--dulled rib plunging
into earth, heart
unseen, opening like a flower.

Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 1993
Blueline

The Contemplative

If I see myself kissing you
it's only a thin layer of my crime

just because I think I love
you when I kiss you

or I don't think of love at all
or worse, I think of your pleasure

and sneak an eye to open, marvel at
the rapture on your face

and, forgetting the smiles of death
the grin of the universe, come

thinking you love me, thinking
our thoughts, too, have embraced.

Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 1993
We Eat This


End of Their Days (from "Hold the Universe: Slices of Spam")

in autumn
creamy centaurs careen
deferring coy play
their strings have rotted

women want big
aesthetic spawn
restless old emmanuels
recriminatory nibs

in the earthly parabolic
the last adventures
dim, redden our helium muff
no more endless searching

no more periphrastic confusion
they never thought
it would happen
to them

Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 2004


Once Again

To be held
simply for a moment
in this obsidian cradle
we call night

To accept
the promise of darkness
if only to see once again
with all else but eyes


Copyright by Homer Mitchell, 1994
Southern Poetry Review

On the Execution of Elizabeth Bishop's Mouse:
An Interview With A Gone Cat

Part 4       The Mugwump's Dilemma

Consider this an invitation…

Are these propositions meaningful?
Are they helpful?

Simply wrong? As a lib-er--al
how would you change them, modify the list?

As a conserv--ative
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Part 3 Lambasted by Uncle Angst

You're a poet! For god's sake!

The literati want to know if you suffer
from metaphysical hunger,

whether or not your life verges
on existential psychosis.

Part 2       Faith-Based Colonoscopies

Do I dare to wear a pseudo suit
a beatnik shrug, to beat a peach?

or to lie entabled through my teeth
IV'ed, splayed, spread out like melting

brie, like gone Michelangelo
whose bones draw still like Ferlinghetti's

Coney Island, far out, where him just hang
there, Jeeezus, of the mind, etherized……….

The patient is ready for discharge, Dr. Benway
Yes, give me the pistol, the purpose, the papers, the pear…..

Part 2A        A Single Sane Moment

I do not suffer from metaphysical hunger
nor does my life verge on existential psychosis

like everybody else, I wrestle
with the quotidian, with those great questions

"Why does the porridge bird lay its eggs in the air?'"

or "How can an army of one send home so many dead?"

a poet: one who sometimes writes poetry
present me in any literary garb

you wish such as a "Beat outcast"
but I will ignore such billings. Thank you and far out

Part 1        He's Sure Guilty of Something

My writing--like my life-
is what it is

I have placed no jar in Tennessee
no geranium by the garbage pail

survived no wasteland
endured no second comings

I did work three summers trapping gypsy moths
never catching one

I have spent nights unintended
in the woods.

my father's knowing Jack Ruby
kept me from getting secret clearance

and my bed slats once broke
on a "first date"

someday perhaps I'll write of those
or not

but now, pass me the daily bread
--life, as they say oh so wearily, goes on

                                         by, and with apologies to all, Homer Mitchell