Returns

 

 

        Returns

I opened the door to the blacksmith shop with care

since the hinges, pock-marked and encrusted

with rust, were almost more than the frame could bear.

 

There was no floor. I walked on dust instead.

Tools turning to dust were everywhere

scattered through my great-grandfather's shed.

 

Horseshoes, the pincers that held them in the fire,

then laid them on the anvil, glowing red,

had now cooled together a hundred years.

 

A hammer rested on its cylindrical head,

long wooden handle projecting in the air,

waiting, still propped against the anvil's side,

 

to be lifted by the hand that dropped it there,

the hand that worked the bellows, now long decayed.

                                  I pumped it and the ashes scarcely stirred.

 

Hearing the rustle of leaves, I turned my head.                  

At my back, in the half-open door, the sunlight edged

between the darkness here and the brightness there,

like the blacksmith's face, peering from the dead

at the shadows left behind - his works, his heir.

Tell the Acrobats

 

                                                            Tell the Acrobats

   Tell the acrobats waiting in the forest clearing

   to pack their circus wagons and leave without me,

   I've had my fill of emptiness spinning around me,

   catching jagged bits of voices flying from the crowd

   like shards exploding from a hammered mirror.

   Slipping from my partner's sweaty palms, I flew

   from that. I'm staying where Chance

   dropped me. Here, the cemetery is the real town;

   the living, in suburban exile, fringe the dead.

   At last, that's all the upward mobility I need.

   Give the ladies, the fat one, the bearded one,

   and the one who's a target to be missed by knives,

   the frayed remnants of my well-worn love.

   Lift up the elephant's ear and whisper that always

   I'll see myself as I was reflected in her sad eye.