TomSheehan

Up River

This morning the sea

walks up the river

chanting on gray cubits of air,

talking sail and spar talk

the way trees worry themselves tired

and ache like old houses the wind

has a secret desire for.

Birds, blacker than some thoughts,

make mischievous noises here

all along the brush path,

through rocks, as tides turn,

the out in and the in out,

a clock at midnight's exchange,

where hands make the decision.

These birds, raucous

journeymen at nerves,

pirates at orgy's wars,

masters of chord limericks,

hosts of madcap mornings,

only allow the sea so far.

If this is a paradise, they clamor

for its absolute possession.

Contradictions

But the not not is here.

Not the knot not, but the

No not, the never, the whole

Passel of no, a brigade

Of nos and nots, nors and

Nevers, stubby as a beard;

Up nos, erect nos, two-

Legged nos, elements of nos

Hardy as the Comstock Lode.

No maybes in the whole pile,

Not a single perhaps or

A we'll see. The ban,

The taboo, the prohibition

All sitting square as a cat

Face above a window box.

Never is is never was

And not or no or never is not,

The kind of not we know,

The real not, the endless not,

The untied and infernal not

More noose than the gallows

Sitting on a sparse hill.

If I had never heard of no

Or not knew never or never not,

I'd be not what I am but what not

I am.

Flight Time

Birch logs stack up

like retired Spitfires,

wingless, splattered

with cloudy camouflage,

lucky enough

to outdo that war.

I fondle birch

the way my brother

did his balsa

coming to shape

of early Grummans,

Wiley Post's stubby craft,

a Douglas carrier

kitchen-table long.

Part way past

my father's knee,

incessantly dreamed

of G-8 and His Battle Aces;

now I stack remnant Spads,

red oak Fokkers

the Germans dove

above the trenches,

stout British craft

some automobiler made

now made by apple bough.

Neighbor wants

his tree down,

desires the guttural

throat of my chain saw,

gnash of lusty teeth.

He cannot activate

the craft loose

in the maple,

the wingspans,

wind rip of aileron,

the mad collage

of insignia,

those sleek structures

diving on the clouds;

does not see

Spad's ultimate death

in wood stove's bowels.

I yield

to be good neighbor,

let loose the lusty teeth,

bring his squadrons

into my wood box,

end the air wars

above the trenches.

You name the battle,

I've been there.

Tom Sheehan's Epic Cures, a collection of short stories, was recently released by Press 53 and has been awarded an IPPY Honorable Mention in fiction books by Independent Publishers. A Collection of Friends, memoirs, was issued in 2004 by Pocol Press (nominated for PEN America Albrand Memoir Award). A poetry chapbook, The Westering, was issued 2004 by Wind River Press. His fourth poetry book, This Rare Earth & Other Flights, was issued in 2003, by Lit Pot Press. Two mysteries in print are Vigilantes East, 2002 and Death for the Phantom Receiver, an NFL mystery, in 2003. An Accountable Death, is serialized on 3amMagazine.com. He has six Pushcart nominations, and a Silver Rose Award from American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) for short story. He has won a London non-fiction competition (Eastoftheweb). He is co-editor of a new history of his hometown of Saugus, MA, Of Time and the River, Saugus 1900-2005, a sequel to the 2001 issue A Gathering of Memories, which sold out all its 2500 copies at $42 each. They expect to sell 2000 copies of the sequel.