Three Poems by Ed Lyons

Ships in the Night

 

I know we both have a lot to say

I know we both live from day to day

I know you’re packing and you’re going away

And we can’t find anything to say

 

Why can’t we meet on common ground?

With trees and stars shining all around

Taking our shoes off and hanging around

Why can’t we find our common ground?

 

But where are you going when you leave here?

Can I call you far, can I call you near?

Where is your next stop or isn’t clear?

When is the next time you’ll be back here?

 

Flashes of black and flashes of gold

We can’t let our dreams be bought and sold

The time runs free and the days unfold

I’ll see you again when the nights grow cold

What the Thunder Said 

 

And apocalyptic feeling came on the summer wind

As if the earth were saying this is all too much

Across the bay the storm clouds were assembled

Beyond the towers the lightning split the sky

 

As if to say why don’t you all remember?

Why are you terrified to look within?

Can’t you free the emptiness the wind blows through?

The empty southern wind in the summer blows

 

Why can’t you stand to be as lonely as the lazy stars?

And what is all the meaning of your busy ways?

What is it you won’t say that drives you mad?

That’s what the thunder said as it split the air

 

And what’s the urge that drives you through these cities?

That rise like floodlit rivers in the night

The sun was in my eyes as we crossed the bridge

Across the river and deep into the West.

 

And if there is a moral to this restlessness

And if you are to know the grand design

I think you have to leave it all behind you

Collect your faith and swim in the unknown

 

And maybe there the thunder’s not so frightening

It’s only trying to tell me I must change

And maybe revolution’s not so terrible

Perhaps the world is friendly in the end

 

And in the emptiness there grows a garden

And if I reach it I will have to stay

Forgetting all the things that I thought were true

Forgetting all that stripped me raw and bleeding

 

It’s got to be that way that’s what the angels say

And I can hear them singing in the stars

And I can hear them singing on the summer wind

A song bright as a storm across the bay

Starlight and Velvet 

 

She’s got me on starlight again

She’s got me on starlight again

 

And I’m rolling down

            The rivers of the city night

My hands are shaking

            And my thoughts are spinning right

It feels like velvet

            And I wish I may I wish I might

Drown my sorrow

            In her footsteps so light

 

 

She’s got me on sunshine again

She’s got me on sunshine again

 

And my face is burning

            And the fire rages in my mind

The world’s exploding

            And I’m staring at the death of time

The sky is grieving

            And the glowing trees are dreadful kind

And the stairway is waiting

            For me to climb

 

 

She’s got me on moonbeams again

She’s got me on moonbeams again

 

The room’s expanding and

            I can’t think of what to say

The tide is flowing

            And it nearly takes my breath away

Electric curtains

            Catch the fire of the breaking day

The rhythm holds me

            And I guess it’s time to go and play

Ed Lyons has been writing and publishing poems for over forty years. He is a regular contributor to the Poems from the Heron Clan anthology, and has also appeared in Albatross, A New Ulster, and written hymns for the Moravian Church. The last is the subject of Ed’s 2019 chapbook Wachovia, published by Katherine James Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ed lives in Winston-Salem, also in North Carolina.