APRIL WORDS (poem-a-day 2014)

PRELUDE:
A poem a day?
Words may wonder here awhile,
Rain drips from the eaves.

APRIL 1
I went to call morning down
Before the valley thought sunlight,
Before school kids scudded along sidewalks,
Leaning in on each other,
Forgetting tyranny awaits,
Stepping sideways around all things odd

APRIL 2
(on visiting the ghost town called Beckley)

Empty eyes have forgotten
What used to fill them,
How they reflected window shoppers,
And small boys in awe of Christmas,
How ladies in click-heels used to carry
Boxes, bags, this way, that,
Only you and I, passing through, know
There was once a city here.

APRIL 3
random word: Appalachia

If you are from here,
You don't notice so much,
It's not your words that preserve
what you don't know is passing,
You don't know what it is you do,
If Grandma had a code,
It was a quiet laugh at the absurdity of the question,
People from elsewhere,
Incognito among the dogtooth,
Won't recognize
An imperfect original
Without an added flourish.

(No shit -- I lifted a book from the shelf, opened blindly, pointed to a word and there was Appalachia -- which had been in my mind for awhile now -- as if we're the new thing here -- people listening to things we're not saying.)

APRIL 4

(Guilt)

All the things we can't know,
What babies dream,
Where night begins,
What the moon hears,

Why do we blame ourselves
For people we were along the way?
My sins are small but sturdy,
A missed moment,
A smile held,
A word unspoken a dozen times,
These only wake me at night.

We think we're creator gods
In charge of worlds we've meant,
Able to do better,
All the things we couldn't know
Assail when dreams shake the rafters,
The fact we know better now
Should tell us we're better
Than we imagine.

Let's agree to wake ourselves
From old agreements,
Shake off the could-have-beens,
And let this new day
Shine its own sun.

APRIL 5

We're sitting here
Saturday evening,
In a town where nothing
Lives these days,
Listening to Garrison on a red radio,
Might as well be sitting in that cabin
We've dreamed for moments like this,
There are woods near,
A moon in the sky,
A pathway people walk
Who've been gone for years,
We're barely listening,
To a story we've heard before
With different names,
And similar places,
We drift out and back again,
Knowing we'll still drift here,
When we join those feet
On that path between moments.


The second five (30 for Thirty)