| No Diminishing Returns We talk fifty miles over wire, a mile for each year since our eyes touched. Legends still vibrate in your voice, fables, story of a stray star, Atlantis provoked, burst meadow beyond the hill, bedding down, a tree counting the darkness, flower in a field of rye. I remember a winter clean as salt, memorialized snow banks, foreign country of a couch thickly green and awkward as landed amphibian, a blue wool skirt of accordianed pleats I blew smoke into, my ear on its blue sky listening to stars inside, eyes closed, mouth opened, stretching, reaching, turning corners. |
| Inward Tracking He had imagined it this way, voices of far, thin stars nearly audible, same course sounding of sap below spring bark of a maple tree, slow torment of almost being heard on nights steaming atop themselves. He had promised his listening, to come from behind doors, to open saturated pores, to leave everything behind in a forgotten darkness, listening, his father said, listening to the universe, birds crying upwind, ants at excavations so deep they could excite Earth. Under weights of silent stars he paused, then faintly on the upkeep of wind, its twist and slow-ordered phalanxing, found indelible words with hard handles for grasping, words secreted in music, waiting for the call. |
| Night River, East Saugus Silver under-rides every wash and turn, ribbons of it, plucked pieces from a sea of chemicals and ores pocketbook rich. I have fished exactly here, by this rock, saw my monofilament disappear in ripples, see it now raw-mooned and winding out as if some great striper gills it home, takes it tail-deep, threatens to spawn majestically all these bedrock places. Night sings in rushes and wind-bowed reeds where red-winged blackbirds shagged worms for their hidden young, peepless, cribbed in rich sanctuaries, darkly bedded, barned. All day the old ones mounted swift sorties against me, dove screaming out of the sun like Spads or Neuports in France's prime. Now they shove wings in tucking places, uncoil, rest heads as if necks are broken. When I shake day and boots from feet, plunge them in this silver rewarding, feel sea's edge the way a poem cuts a solitary hour, the river takes itself seriously, dares, moves like a sly hand, reaches for true flesh, tastes the nouns. |
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Copyright 2006 Tom Sheehan
All Rights Reserved
| Tom Sheehan has published 7
books in the last 6 years: mysteries, poetry, memoirs, short
story collections. They include Epic Cures, short stories in 2005; A Collection of Friends, memoirs, in 2004; and This Rare Earth & Other Flights, poetry, in 2003. He has six Pushcart nominations, a Martha Albrend memoir nomination, a Silver Rose Award from ART for short story.
Tom Sheehan's poetry can also be
read on
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