After the Baseball Game
Was
there watching the players
Make their way from the dugout to the
Locker rooms under
The stands, the crowd moving down
The ramps toward their cars,
Didn’t
feel like going home.
Shadows were crawling across the green
Field, the
day windy,
Almost cool enough to wish
You’d worn shirtsleeves,
And
there were hills that carried
The known streets further down; there by the bay,
Blue and chopped beneath
The drawbridge, there the catwalk
Over the causeway,
And
this moped can make it
Out to the beach, which used to be too
Far unless Mom drives.
Gonna take time, but you
got plenty of time
now.
Get
through these cars. Damn this bridge
is high. Look. Boat below, trailing wake.
See it through the grate.
Good thing it’s dry LOOK WHERE YOU’RE GOING
Sidewalk. Clear shot now.
Along
the pier there’s a crowd
Like at a small carnival gathered.
Something’s happening.
There’s the black and white van from Ninety-
Eight Rock. It’s that
Jam,
that Battle of the Bands
They’re talking about. There, the last band’s
Taking the stage.
They came from the forests north
Of Tampa, The Spring
Gap
Band and they sound like sun-
Light on great rivers; their bitter love
Songs were breezes through
Spanish moss, and I felt glad
Leaning over my
Handlebars,
thinking about
Freedom and how this time is my time,
Not what someone else
Cares about, guys in black t-
Shirts making rebel
Yells
and wild chicks with flasks,
What I wanted. What I was waiting
For. They finished, and
The applause was thin but true.
Days will get warmer,
Crowds
denser, bands louder,
I can come here whenever I like.
Gonna be good times.
Wait till Ian hears about
this! Palm fronds rustling
In
the breeze. Saturday. Dad’s
Cooking steaks on the grill. Long shadows.
Gotta get going.
We lived in the hills in the
Highest part of
The
county. Takes forty-five
Minutes through boulevards, suburbs, and
Ghettoes. I can go
Any way I like. Stop off
For a Coke maybe.
The Will of Summer
Those
were warm days.
There
was no sunrise in the kitchen window.
The
leaves, rich and warm, filtered it’s light.
Sparrows
fluttered from
The
birdhouse to peck at the
Piecrusts
scattered on the clover.
A
tractor in a distant field
Emerged
from the ebb of a passing car.
Wet
dirt cooled in the shade.
Stones
plunked in the deep well
Under
the porch. Dark and dirty.
The
dog’s still barking at the car.
The
kitchen fan hummed
Like
trucks on the turnpike.
Chunks
of fresh apple lay in wet dough.
The
walls were green and quiet.
The
stormdoor hissed itself shut.
The
day resolves itself into forms of remembering.
I
heard the chickens chortle
From
across the sunny fields
That
lined the road,
Passed
the dark porches
Read
the sequence of German names
That
hung from signposts.
I
heard the clatter stream from the factory windows,
The
clock out front of the garage doesn’t work.
No
one was using the phone at the crossroads.
Weeds
grew around the pile of
stones
Behind
the hotel. Yellow walls.
Tires
rustled like wind over gravel that cut my feet.
Where
the shallow water
moved
beneath the bridge
I
could see the back of the village
And
followed the steam through
The
quiet fields alive with cicadas,
The
corngreen wall –
The
bees swarming the tassles
The
deer safe and hidden,
Alone
at the edge of the ripening field,
Confused
and wondering
About
her –
She
leaning on the porchrail
Serene
in the bright hot evening,
She
telling intense shocking secrets
Over
the phone as you stood in the booth
At
the crossroads where none could listen
Listen
in on the party line –
Hers
the brilliant field
So
dark within, hers,
The
hushed and shallow water,
Isis of the swarming corn.
In the Big World
Rain
scattered over fields and furrows
All
night tapping leaves and living decay
Daffodil
Sap surging through its heartbeat
Emerges
From the soil that fascinates like fire
By
dawn the bud has opened
You’re holding the cool dry stalk
Lifting the flower by its chin,
Gazing into yellow landscapes –
Flame within petals
Green pollen stalks
Bridges
into the center of all that lives.
You
stand minute in the golden meadows
Hawks riding windswells beneath the distant clouds,
Wind
swelling through high needles vaster than hymns
The vast loneliness encloses you
All
the windy spaces pour into the room of your thinking.
The sun blooms among the clouds,
Spilling fire through fallen leaves.
The shopping centers around the interchange
Become a bitter joke; the fine arts
Members and virtuosos a more formidable irony
The mazes of ants move at the Queen’s direction,
You find comfort in the coming of night,
The wail of wolves and the screaming of owls.
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 previously in Lothlorien Poetry
Journal, 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.
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