Five Poems by John Riley

 

If Only

 

If only we breathed butterfly dust

to lure us to sleep

spent in the passion

molten soil once claimed

as its own.

 

If only we slipped behind

a cloud

fired blue by lightning

too bold and cruel

for rain to soothe.

 

If only you exploded

around me

we could wind away,

winded by the breath

of multitudes breathing as one.

Untitled

When the wind here flows

lightly across the grey pasture,

the mud-dried riding ring,

it is as if . . . .

 

now as if . . . .

 

the parcelled land does touch

the wind

 

Then with a gasp a new wind

whirls fast and faster

at great heights here beneath the sun

 

where there is such beauty bright,

where the blue-eyed raven tends his feet

 

I take a pause from my first bite

chewing the apple's core

so as to not

bite into a seed

 

and day presses into a night's gown,

pleased to become tomorrow's eve

The Colonel's Last Battlefield

Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, September 2021


They bused us, the old folks, to the battlefield,
where first we'll have a picnic by the slate-coloured lake.
Later, the young nurse will lead us to the water's edge
to feed the geese and watch the brown and grey ducks
spin with their heads beneath the surface.
All care has been taken to assure our safety,
walking paths cleared, attendants standing ready.


Here, six klicks from the old Meeting House,
a Quaker general settled his soul into hell
bloodying a British lord's mercenaries.
The bones of the fallen,
now prize possessions
protected by federal law,
are buried where they fell.


Like the memory of my last passion
the venom once here no longer lingers.
Below me, in the soft wet ground
where my feet dare not shuffle
the foliage of post-bloom bulbs
droop beyond their weight.


On the water's dark surface
three mallards with silky green heads
tire of my stare, glide to the other side,
trailing six lines of diverging wake.

Beneath

 

The rabbit hiding beneath the boxwood

crouches at the sound of my nearing feet

 

there in the shadow cast by the fullness

of the green umbrella of the baby gem.

 

For what purpose is my hoping the rabbit

stays through the falling evening, beneath

 

the bluing glow across the top ridge

of row after row of greening trees

 

rowing far beyond my quieting town?

After A Talk With A Friend

 

How can he imagine that my last regard

is waiting by a swamp in drifting fog

 

armed only with a snake's sting

or perhaps an alligator's dry bite

 

when both of us know my regard

would never hide in a swamp

 

where a step too deep into the deeper dark

could marry my all to the vanishing

 

and he surely understands my regard

loathes the smell of soaked soil

 

or standing beneath river oaks that stood

straight during years of floods

 

and rivers smell too much of now

to keep my regard from wavering

 

at a time when it must be as steady

as measured laws locked in old books.

 

My friend should know by now to accept

my last regard never leaves my side,

 

waits for the old man to finish his tasks,

wise to the ways of waiting.

John Riley lives in North Carolina with his wife and dogs. He's published poetry, fiction, and reviews in Smokelong Quarterly, Eclectica, Banyan Review, Litro, and dozens of other journals and anthologies. EXOT Books will publish a volume of 100 of his 100-word prose poems in 2023. He has also published over forty books of nonfiction for young adults.