Five Poems by Richard Long

 

Auger

 

I biked to the winter pond

without bait, a hook, or line,

not even a starter log for a fire,

and as I stood at the edge of it

the dead weight of all my wrongs

twisted like an auger to the bottom

where a cold blue hand signed

Share what’s left of your body heat.

 

And when I gripped it, I trembled

at the blossom of hallucination—

a boy in tears lost in the woods

happening upon my bike, the shake

of what was left of my body heat

wrapping around him as he rode away.

 

Dream Big

 

Sometimes when I’m dead

tired and I stop on the shoulder

of the road and cars speed by

 

I remember Mother

would always admonish me

to be home by supper.

 

Way back I was biking home

from Wrightsville Beach

and didn’t get any farther

 

than the other side of the waterway

and there was no way to let Mother know

I’m not coming home,

 

don’t keep supper waiting,

I’ll never wake up.

 

Sanctuary Light

 

On a Sunday daddy gave me my bike

with the training wheels and followed me

up the hill to the evangelical church.

 

The morning was already blue and hot

and when we walked in my red tie had bled

into the wet splotches of my white shirt.

 

I now remember even daddy was military stiff

as a snake wrapped around the pastor’s neck

and he too couldn’t comprehend the sermon

 

delivered in the twitch of an unknown tongue

and how he diverted attention to a blackbird

at the window and how it kept on screeching

 

until it gave up the ghost and flew away

as daddy marched me from the sanctuary.

 

The Desert of Lost

 

I took a wrong turn,

the dark was coming on,

and just like that

was lost in the desert.

Nowhere was shelter,

a picnic table

for spreading my gear,

an outlet to charge my phone.

 

There in the desert of lost,

without electric, water,

no signal, nothing to eat,

not even a mummy bag to keep

me warm, beneath stars

I fell dead asleep.

 

The Good Semblance

 

I don’t know where I’ve gone

or how long I’ve been lost

when I turn to pedal home.

 

Time and distance have blurred

into a mountain of hallucination

until suddenly clear at the range

 

stands Mother, cooking chicken

and dumplings as my semblance

could be mistaken for the steam.

 

A china bowl cracks and Mother

senses all is well—I am home

from my lesson at music school

 

to tell her about my day

and play my clarinet for her.

Richard Long is a retired English professor in Santa Rosa, California. Since 1996, he has edited 2River, www.2River.org, quarterly publishing The 2River View and occasionally publishing individual authors in the 2River Chapbook Series.