Baptism

Sometimes I feel the streams of memory

overflowing the banks of any containment

I have erected to keep past dreams and desires

from flooding me for forty days and nights. 

Water is not my element and it holds creatures

deep within me I do not know I can defeat 

the way Beowulf once did in that sea that 

has become a metaphor and so much more

dangerous.  I worry how the past has a strength 

that can exceed the moment, a dance that will

not be forgotten, a touch the heart still longs for.

“There’s nothing but now,” I remind myself 

as if a lie like that can change the truth

and see the waters rise and consider the nature

of baptism – standing in the river, priest or 

priestess beside me, one hand on my back, one hand

over my mouth, nose squeezed shut and my arms

crossed.  The words spoken, the submersion, my 

wet, sputtering reply as my eyes open.  The brothers

and sisters of the deep having marked me

and I walk on the water to the shore forever dripping

with that knowledge I can’t speak of, forever 

its essence in inarticulate splendor within me. 

The fear of drowning gone.

-Byron Hoot

 hootnhowlpoetry.com. 

Grendel Upon Hrothgar

I have heard you play the harp 

and sing when the spirit of the Shaper

has entered you and know your songs

of victories and defeats, trust and betrayal

is our story cast on other characters 

in another time.  You cannot sing the song

of here and now and yet you cannot be 

silent.  A pleasing voice.  Tales well-told

and the magic of words has sometimes held

me long enough outside the walls of Hart

Hall for me to cast a reprieve for the night,

a weakness of mine, a refusal to attack.

I go back and leave no sign of my visit;

you know nothing how the words

have moved me, those shared memories

that have made us more than brothers,

those shared memories that have made 

our lives our story – king and monster,

the curse of each and each of us seeking

some kind of victory or defeat to hear

the final verse repeated and the echo

of a final note.  I, too, play and sing

but unheard by anyone.  No-one pounds

tables, calls for mead; I have no hall 

but yours and when I do sing there all 

you hear are screams, the songs of death

you taught me, O brother, O king, hee, hee, hee.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Waking

I opened my eyes and saw first

light and closed my eyes 

wanting a dream to take me 

into the day.  None came so

I got up to look into the mist

of last night’s rain seeking 

something vaguely familiar

like a fallen feather from 

an Angel’s wing, a bear track

glittering with gold dust,

the blues intertwined

with a hymn, some sign of damnation

and salvation and beauty in a seamless

robe, a seamless story, a poem 

with metaphors of love human-and-divine,

bodies as wineskins holding the elixir

of life.  I saw nothing then looked 

at this page and saw I’d seen everything

I was looking for – even the one I 

made no mention of.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Piles of the Morning

Origins of faint sore dust looms in drinking waste

Pockets pretending under soft vigils

Gifts of seeking tundras

Miles of ready tides

Rusty leaves and tired mansions of truth wander into herds left blind

Auroras deny bottled meaning

Tired of want

Ready for rest

Eastern doors making dancing dens

Proper spaces where open coins fall into trance and milk

Piles of the morning

-Cory Tambourine

https://mothlightva.weebly.com

“Fare Thee Well”

 Leaves are losing their exuberance

of green, some trees have given

over to the fall colors, the curling

of their leaves. All except the pines 

are a duller green, the leaves

thinning, more light, more shadows

and the allies of shorter days and longer

nights has struck the chords of melancholy

in this gloaming time of the year,

the sweet sorrow of no longer holding 

what was once held, seen, heard, felt

and memories turning into new dreams

like that water into wine at the wedding 

feast which is what time is and the surprise

the best wine is served last,  So the light

is moving with time and desire, the seductive

right temptation one more time, the sigh

of surrender as one season ends and another 

through the opening of leaves letting light in.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Impossible the Debt Bestowed

 It is the gloaming in steady rain 

striking the windshield, windows,

that metallic sound of rain 

hitting the car’s roof,  

fog rising in random valleys. 

Sense the constancy of beauty,

take a bill out of my mailbox

that provides no gloaming, 

nothing haunting, no fog 

letting me wonder where I am, might be.

I will pay the bill tomorrow.

This evening’s beauty, this  

will not leave, this sense of being

given what I can never pay for.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Twelve Miles and a Lifetime

I was in Franklin.  The last landmark

before Oil City where my grandparents

and Aunt Fern and Uncle Ted lived.

Where Thanksgiving and Christmas 

dinners were made, served, stories told

 about hunting and churches.  Where sets

of dinnerware and silverware were stacked

on shelves and in drawers.  Where garage 

sale items were treasures waiting for 

the right antique buyer who never came.  

Twelve miles I could have driven

to Halyday Run Road, driven up

the hill to the two houses side-by-side,

a mixed history too long entangled.

Looked at them from the road

seeing in and feeling the charged air

between Mom and her younger sister,

Mary – one married to a preacher,

the other a mistress.  There was always

a storm in the air.  Dad would say, when

the dishes were done after breakfast,

 “Well, we’d best be going.”  And gram

would wrap her homemade cinnamon rolls

for me and offer them like a peace offering

as we’d leave.  Mary and Mom a cold embrace,

me dreaming of the deer antlers and bear

skulls and rifles at Uncle Ted and Aunt Ferns’

house, the men all hugging, Aunt Fern watching

with those sad eyes and gram smiling –relieved,

pleased, dismayed – it was hard to tell.

I didn’t drive those twelve miles between 

Franklin and Oil City; I’d driven them before.

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoetry.com.

Beyond Duration

I am 71, find I think more about time

than I talk about it.  Think only in the spiritual

realm is “in my end is my beginning” true.

Know you and I have the double-edged

sword of flesh and blood, heart and soul,

that grace of imagination.  “Consider the lilies

of the field, how they grow. . . Even Solomon 

in all his glory was not arrayed like one

of these.”  I feel the stick of a Zen master

across my heart and soul and mind.

Consider the nature of time as I know it –

sunrise to sunset, moonrise to moonset.

Waking, dreaming.  Think 10, 15 years then

think again – a year has no meaning, 

only what can be held, given away,

all and everything beyond duration 

except for remembering.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Visitation

He was standing at the end of my bed

on my left side in that tan shirt, brown 

pants, brown belt and shoes.  With that 

grin reassuring and unnerving.

“Dad?”  He’d been dead 32 years and I 

was in a hospital.  A disturbing 

surprise; he didn’t say anything and 

disappeared.  And I was thinking of 

conclusions of a thousand choices I 

didn’t know I had made and how they now

presented themselves as inevitable.

The way I was of him, my children of me,

the stories I told, how the past had come 

to here and now and how the future 

would come out of every here and now

and how all I wanted was to get well 

enough to leave but not before my time

thinking how time and eternity like

a double-entendre and how careful

I should be in choosing what I say

and do and looked again to make sure

Dad had left alone.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

hootism:  one little bite can change everything.

Leaving and Arriving

 I am leaving in the dream and I 

don’t know where I’m leaving 

from or going to when I hear,

“Here and now to here and now”

as if that means anything.

Think of pictures I have taken 

of landscapes and know there

is no possibility of repeating them – 

everything from where I’d stand,

what I’d see, the frame of time

that no second, minute, hour

can hold exactly would be different.

And so would I, repeat, “Here and now

to here and now” look outside, look

in, get that wry smile my dad would sometimes

get when he preached speaking for God.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Snorkel by Cory Tambourine

From Artist Cory Tambourine
http://mothlightva.weebly.com