Here is what I bring to you, Day:
A restlessness haunting the hours,
Like the moon behind the trees—here,
And here, now here. A belief
In the core, the place of origin,
Creek water walked in as a child,
The dirt tracks toy Corvettes made,
My son’s laughter exploding
From a pile of leaves we never
Gathered in fall. I give this all up Continue reading “To Day”
Tag: nature
The Writing on the Wall
Once I was walking around Boston and stopped at a brick building that had some chalked words written on it. The words were “The Writing.” I kept walking and then I got it. I laughed out loud. What is the writing on your wall? Continue reading “The Writing on the Wall”
The Killdeer
We stopped the white Chevy with the rusted tailgate,
Half in the ditch, and walked up the hillside,
Through the pine trees and scrub oak, fall leaves
Like letters in an abandoned apartment cracking
Under our feet. There was nothing and everything
To see in the woods, the snake skin, coyote scat,
Half-hidden killdeer nest, muddy water of the hollow.
He pointed these things out to me, a child learning
to see from her father. We all learn
To see from the people who came before us. Continue reading “The Killdeer”
Merlin’s Last Art
The heart becomes the master after all
–Even with my first and last art
of fire—blazing or smoldering,
identity is not known.
Heart smothers the flame.
Water banishes it.
And the smoke rising
in the air and the weightless
ash that drifts into the trees
are someone else’s gifts.
I have slept through
the exchange.
–Shaun Perkins
Stubborn: Poem for the New Year
I am the blackjack oak
protecting herself
with a 2nd set of leaves.
Christmas at Rose, Oklahoma
In old photos, you are grainy
As the chicken shed wood,
Groovy in the rotting way,
Alive to what will be,
And not decay or was,
Not the illuminated past,
But next and next and next.
–Shaun Perkins
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 