Issue 2:1 | Featured Artist | Jeffery Beam

POEMS
By Jeffery Beam

 

 

OWL FLIGHT

 

This morning the world still

                                                half-dark

an owl flew off near the house

into the woods

                          fast

            wings out-spread

 

            floating

                              free falling

 

Whoosh shook the dawn

                                                Breakneck rose the sun

 

Alarm sweetened the terrorized rain

the tender-waking other birds

quick as match-flicks

                                    condensed spheres of smoky twitter

 

            Royal owl

 

Cosmos in him

Dawn-wakener

                       

                                    Thunder-stealer

 

                                   


 

DOG SLEEPING

 

He sleeps the rugged deep sleep

that knows sleep as a rest and letting go

after the rock escarpment

climax of a climb -

the flightless sound birds make when

dirt bathes their parasitic skins -

the sleep that stills (a log they say)

yet gathers strength in

each extremity to twitch

with dreams from air.  The

sleep that mothers wish for

and fear in night's illness.

 

It comes so easily to him,

a scalawag, a mentor, and

a beast.  It rises rhythmically

near his loins.  And when through soft

and furry breath

sufficiently care dissipates,

the Lord Dog rises,

bows nobly to the sun, his charioteer,

and goes, off to the next mountain,

or gully, or pond just as humans do,

as around each turn

they find their unexpected life.

 

 

                                   

 

 

 


ALBINO DEER

 

How still he stands

among the rash scrubbery

down in the flat wet

below the roadbed.

 

Pink eyes fearless.

Tail flashless in

stockaded stillness.

 

He turns, ambling away,

slipping into the bare tree tangle.

White shard.

Sheeny brightness.

 

Gone.

            ***

Alain spots a deer:

 

Deer snow white deer,

in the middle of nowhere,

how did I find such a treasure?

 

Are you listening for

thank you letters?

For love?

 

            ***

Albino deer, farewell:

 

What did he leave?

What trail of almost goose

feathers impaled on the bushes?

A mind-candle, surely.

The pink underskin

of the world

radiant, fair.     

 


 

TWO LOVES

 

This is my lesson in humility.

My lesson in grief.

My lesson in the cruelty of the human heart, my own.

Trudging through deep southern snow:

finding both of your faces frozen in the white.

Sparrows still singing in the shrubbery.

 

I could not say it then.

I cannot say it now.

My heart split in two.

A tree limb weighted by ice.

A white             quiet and protective.

A white             dangerously warm.

My hands spiritless in the drifts.

 

Why do birds continue to sing?


SONG FOR A BIRTHDAY:

Calycanthus floridus

 

This the month

when the dying God revives, winters fires

smothering springs flames, all

tumbling into summer's thickening

 

In the air Love's green nobility

 

Such melon anguish the sweet shrub makes

Its multi-cupped flowers opening

Little lotuses at the wood's edge

A remedy

to slay winter darkness

 

And in the air Love's green nobility

                        Love's     bright     coy     God

 

 

                                   

 


little: a Happy Hill Sutra         

for SF, TM, GW, JW

                       

For all the Little People in the worlds (ours and theirs). 

All of us have not forgotten you.

 

I came to crush time to study you to teach.

The Buddha

 

*********************************************************************

 

Little enough said little enough thought little enough forgotten little enough

 

Porch's cold concrete bumble bee's raftered catacomb fog lifting

 

Bat mother in porch eave tell us your favorite supper

 

Incessant wren listen cars climbing the mountain one mouth feeding another

 

Doves weeping on boughs dawn rain

 

Gay feather in daylilies splinter in finger

 

In the dress shop peonies in the garden peonies in the mind one

 

My pockets empty wren hopping cricket death chicks cheeping no rain today

 

Mournful crow fireflies where are you Gods & Goddesses fern fronds

 

Two green grasshoppers bathroom's red walls you looking in mirror too

 

Wasp carrying green worm back again one minute here one minute gone Sisyphus or Sage

 

Negative space no Positive space on

 

Fingers aflame with spring water nothing lasts

 

Not this not that white shadows on the hemlock boughs

 

Too much said too much thought too much forgotten too much

 

One day a man came I am not he observe

                                                                                                            Jeffery Beam