Four Sublime Poems by Jason Ryberg

Beginning the Ritual 

 

Another weirdly warm Winter’s day:

seventy-two degrees here in December

 

(and if December ain’t supposed to be

Winter then I don’t know what is),

 

and the wind is moving all the

fallen leaves around in big scoopfuls

of varying shapes, densities, volumes

and masses, from one front yard

to another,

 

up and down the street, then back again

(wherever they might happen to drop

and settle for the moment), if only just briefly,

before beginning the whole ritual over,

 

once more, moving it all about

in synchronized layered patterns,

like massive flocks of redwing blackbirds

and starlings, or better yet:

 

schools of tropical fish that somehow

managed to escape the water

and fly. 

 

 

A Moment of Clarity 

 

Just a worn-down and twisted spoon

trying to take a break from the thankless

and exhausting job of measuring out all

the moments of our lives, both

little and large, good or bad.

 

Just an old, dusty

cobb-webbed whiskey bottle

(its wild, hell-raising days

long behind it now)

sitting in the middle of

a bare dining room table,

 

a shrivelled spider in its belly,

a glow in the dark skull ring

wrapped around its neck,

a single plastic rose poking up

through its mouth and out

into the wide, weird world.

 

And then there is this ancient

wooden chair, barely holding together

under the strain of its own weight,

like high school, somebody says,

like church, says somebody else,

 

or maybe a little more

like the kind of chair ‘one would find,

next to the back-alley door

of an all-night diner, in which

many souls have sat for

a much-needed smoke break

over the years.

 

Hangin’ Out at the Git and Go 

 

The moon tonight

is the lone pink sodium street light

of one more no name, gas station /

grain elevator town with no bar,

no diner, no movie theater

(since 1980-something),

 

nothing to do on a Friday

or a Saturday night but get

into trouble in some other town

the next county over, or hang out

at the Git and Go, here,

 

and watch a few cars passing through,

sometimes some outta town types

pull in to gas up and walk around a while,

stretching and joking,

 

asking themselves, each other

and, finally, one of us

 

where the hell are we? 

 

 

A Place to Crash 

 

I went to the porch

thinking I would see rain but

instead it was the

 

wind blowing the last

of the leaves of the season

out of the trees (still

 

stubbornly clinging

to their branches) and out in-

to the wider world

 

to find a place to

crash and lay low ‘til things calmed

down a little, now

 

that Old Man Winter

(that mean, old bastard) was back

from his over the

 

road gig and just might

be thinking about hanging

around for a while. 

 

 

Jason Ryberg is the author of fourteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2021). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.