Tag: poets

Time of Evening

~ SW Altair ~ Leave a comment

After work she went to the store
to pick up coffee filters and diapers,
a carton of eggs and 
a bag of day-old raisin bread. 
The tomatoes were on sale that day,
At the canned goods aisle she forgot 
what she needed to get from there.
Was it cream of mushroom or baked beans?
She stood there quietly for a long while, 
trying to remember,
how did she end up here?

Back home there are dishes 
to be washed, trash to be taken out.
A small child crying.
A man who pretends not to hear.
And the sun is quietly disappearing
behind its own purple haze.

Two grocery bags, 
heavy as iron in her arms, 
and she was miles
and miles away from home. 

Unwoven

~ SW Altair ~ 7 Comments

When I was young, I once found
a loose thread
on a brand new sweater.
Not knowing what it did, I pulled on it,
and I kept on pulling,
and pulling,
until I found out.

Every time your fingers dance on my skin, kindling
every fiber of my body into a wildfire,
I think about that loose thread and what it did.

I think about how that beautiful sweater
slowly shrivelled into nothing,

a pile of messy yarn.

The Great Pine In Our Land

~ SW Altair ~ Leave a comment

Between sunrise and bedtime,
everything is believed and therefore
blessed. I come from a bleak land
where the sun never lingers
long enough for us to trust
the open arms of darkness.

Sometimes night comes so fast,
like galloping steeds bearing shadows,
that children forget hunger
and kneel down to pray

around the towering great pine
in the middle of our land where
an old man hums a tune as he
gives his faithful dog a piece of three-day-old
bread. The pigeon comes and snatches it away
from the old man’s palm before the dog
could open its mouth.

The scene repeats itself when fish is absent
from the oceans.

Repeats itself when roses are unreturned
to the gardens.

Repeats itself when the dog remains hungry,
and the pigeon fattens by flour and stolen glory.

And above the circle of our praying children,
the scene repeats itself in the obedient bones
of our fathers, in the yellowing skins of our mothers,
and in the collected debris of our patient existence.

And it won’t stop repeating itself
until the distance is undone
by the lifetime of a poor laboring snail;
until it’s sunrise when everything is believed
and therefore blessed.

The old man, sitting under the great pine
in the middle of our land, never stops
giving bread.