Kenneth P Gurney
After
Angels in blue lace lingerie,
a silver cookie platter,
a coca-cola ad, circa 1920.
Wood block letters
set upon the table top
spell out: L O V E.
The dismantled bed frame
lays on the floor
next to the unplugged phone.
The bare mattress
stands at attention,
then leans against the wall.
An unfinished scrabble game
possesses two words:
"icebox" and "horizon."
Four napkins
unevenly lined up
bleed black verse
down the course
of white fibres.
I’ve looked through
the boxes of books
and double checked
the empty, stacked drawers,
but there are no smiles here.
One Way to Say Another
The hours have no definable purpose,
so we stacked them on the heads of pins.
Delphi shovels time into the furnace
and the house warms perceptively.
Society’s measure misses us
as we happily go from one day to the next.
Delphi’s straight and narrow bends
like the Scamander passing Troy.
If you want to meet Death
on friendly terms, walk
the narrow space between
the paved road and the planted field.
Delphi blurs some articles of faith,
but the falling rain is no accident of belief.
The angels in the aspens remind us
that order persists regardless
of the golden, patternless leaves
on the ground.
C & O
The lock closes, then fills,
rises above the Potomac.
Cargo, nailed shut in crates,
barges its way north and west.
The mules water
and stand their ground.
Hemp, a legal commodity,
binds all things together.
The lock opens. A switch
of willow gets things moving.
note: C & O stands for Chesapeake & Ohio;
the Potomac is a river that runs
from Chesapeake Bay
past washington d.c. and into the mountains.
Copyright © Kenneth P Gurney
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