The Last Tight Curve

I am exploring time as if I don’t 

know what it is and I don’t.

I am trying to make distances

deeper by slowing down, the instances

of curves and straightaways 

not places to get beyond but what may

be lingered in by seeing ahead, around

with a vision and heart and soul sound

with the detritus of time cast aside 

like leaves along the roads I ride

with other purposes than a way to get

me to where I’m going now a way to let

me be where I am heading in the right

direction, destination known when the last tight

curve is in the rearview 

and I know something of time I never knew.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Green In The Face by Cory Tambourine

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

 

This Day, This Season

Grey day, November day.  The last holdout 

tree has let nearly all its leaves fall.

Its shadow a skeleton.  

I keep learning the lessons of seasons:

time’s illusionary stoppage,

my desultory notice not equal 

to the moment, my regret 

of the obvious.  The wrong desire 

for one season to go faster,

another slower when all that’s 

being asked of me is to take 

what is given.  I will try to take

this grey day, this November day

into me and turn the dreams 

of spring away.  “Not yet,” I whisper

like a secret promise that can’t be broken.

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoetry.com

Once Again

The rain and wind have visited the trees

once too often -- the branches nearly bare.

The ground covered in leaves.  An IOU

Nature gives: what falls down rises again.

I say to my heart, “Hear that?” and I feel

the blood warm a bit, the pulse gets stronger.

My eyes and ears sharper, my soul freer

because of the barer trees, the wind against

the house: a library of memories, dreams,

the feathering of time and eternity 

into one another as I say, “Here now,

always now” smile at such a truth, such

a lie.  Such is life.  This falling and rising,

this blurring of seasons – no ends, no beginnings.

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoety.com  

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.