Wednesday 12 July 2023

Two Poems by Linda H.Y. Hegland

 



Old Chevy Truck and Prairie Choirs

 

Dust rises high behind the old Chevy truck,

hay bales stacked to the sky.

Dust caked nostrils, sweat down my back;

buffalo beans and prairie buttercups.

Way out there, a prairie song -

whirr of grasshoppers, shrieks of hawks,

whining keen in the shortgrass hills.

Winds blow lonely, winds blow strong.

 

Drive on out to the far horizon,

old rock and roll on the radio

in that old Chevy truck with my brother.

Sipping whiskey, going slow,

he seeks barns that are old and falling

and rusty harvesters, ghosts of the past.

I seek insect medleys, birdsong choirs.

cowboy songs and old bluegrass.

 

Coyotes running fences, flocks of geese

flying high in a cloud-curdled sky.

I stop the Chevy, look out the window with a sigh.

I yearn to be feral, I wish to haunt rivers,

to run with antelope ‘neath skies of blue.

I long to sleep under a star-pocked sky;

wake in the morning hung with dew.



Wishes on a Falcon/Freeing Falling Stars

 

Laying in a truck bed

on a sultry summer night,

under a slivered moon and a

sky full of falling stars.

Our seventeen-year-old selves,

speaking of fate, of wishes;

of faithfulness and futures.

And you told me the story

of a man that had caught a falcon,

wild and vicious.

 

And of how he trained her

to return to him, always return to him.

First with the weight of chains and

the tight bonds of leather,

over and over, and over and over.

Always pulled back; always returning.

Until finally the falcon wore only

floating skeins of silk on her talons.

But they were enough to bring her back, always.

To the man. Disciplined and tamed.

 

And I held in my hand the letter

you had written to me.

About how we would marry at eighteen;

have four children - two boys, two girls.

About how we would winter in Florida;

about how we would be together.

And you squinted your eyes and held your hand in the air,

catching stars and making them grant wishes.

And each of those things in that letter you made into a wish.

 

You held the stars tight in your fist

until they flicked dark in your hands.

Like a firefly doused.

And the tears I wept ran

from my eyes to my ears and

lost themselves in my hair,

as I stared up at that night sky.

And you thought they were tears

of happiness.

 

In truth, I could  not breathe.

 

You said the story of the bird

was beautiful;

that it told of faithfulness

and being true.

But I thought that story was

sad, so very sad.

To that broken-spirited bird,

floating silk was heavy as chains.

 

You wished to catch stars in your hand;

grasp them until they gave up their wishes.

But I wanted the stars to follow their instincts -

to fall freely, to immolate themselves

in the skin of the sky.

With passion.

 

The next day I told you to go away.

The next day I broke your heart.

Deliberately . . . you said.

And the rumours on which

small towns thrive said that

you hated me.

That I was faithless and untrue.

 

As capricious as a falcon’s heart;

as unstable as a dying star.

 

But, in truth, I just wanted to be

a bird that flew free.

In truth, I just wanted to be a star

that knew ecstasy.




Linda H.Y. Hegland is an award-winning poetry, lyric essay, and non-fiction writer who lives and writes in Nova Scotia, Canada. She writes the occasional short story. Her writing most often reflects the influence of place, and sense of place, and one’s complex and many-layered relationship with it. She has published in numerous literary and art journals and has had work nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She has previously published two books of poetry - ‘Bird Slips, Moon Glows’ and ‘White Horses’, a book of lyric essays - ‘Place of the Heart’, and a book of ‘verses and vignettes’ - Remember in Pieces.

“I am an artist you know . . . it is my right to be odd.”  ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

www.intothewildwriting.com

www.seekingsoulsphotography.com

www.hegland.wixsite.com/fathummingbirdfarm


No comments:

Post a Comment

Last Night - Short Story by Yuan Changming

  Last Night Short Story by Yuan Changming   Now, with your temporary elopement drawing to an end, every minute spent together was, for both...