Three Poems by Michael H. Brownstein

 

A Sun Too Hot, A Break Within The Nature Of Rain

When the rains came,

they came with a cough and a sniffle, a slight thread of silky mucous.

 

We are tired, they cried,

heavy with tomes on distraction, theories on a loss in faith, a lack of empathy.

 

Their clouds gathered into a large convention,

clashed over variations of grey, fire, the weight of water, the pounding of sledge hammers

Nothing changed for nothing mattered,

and the rain fell onto hard packed mud, the oceans rose, and the Bramble Cay melomys went extent.

 

 

Nightfall By The Water

 

Between the camel light of dust and dawn

a growth of  forest within sand and stone,

grand rivers of fish without eyes, transparent

snails, microscopic ants, long-legged beetles.

What eats the earth of this realm and thrives?

The cackle of spotted hyaena, sand fox, Nubian

bustard, cobras, chameleons, skinks, secretary birds,

Acacia and Artemisia, doum palm, oleander, dates, 

thyme, fields of bitter apple, tribes of addax antelopes.

Night comes in with a brilliance of black, glitter of stars,

a coldness of shade and wisps of wind, the noise of prey,

the silence of predator, and near the water, splash 

and crocodile--and then the camel light begins to rise 

easily, a soft footprint in the sky and day begins again.

 

 

Waking Next To Wonder

 

The world splattered ink all over me--

water, then light; rust and moon glitter:

somewhere the Witch of Hollandaise,

Demon of Serpentis, dog of the chariot--

 

Beside me, she dreams she is asleep

her hair stop lighting red to blue to green,

then the colour of the Montserrat beach, early,:

three giant stingrays swimming near the surface

Michael H. Brownstein’s latest volume of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else was recently published by Cholla Needles Press (2018).