Poetry by Phil

This peach, in particular, Sitting on my kitchen table In red silence. In truth it’s rocking back and forth, Vibrating like a familiar tune.   I’ll eat the peach, Swallow its gilded noise, Throw its stripped-black stone Into an empty basket, Container for soundless days. It will return In a thousand loud bites.   Remembering this peach, I’ll tell stories About the incredible things it’s done, The adventures it’s had, From inside each of its many skins. That faint bruising around the navel? The truth trying to break free.    

Driving southward, Iowa to Missouri, Troy (pop.12,079) is 41 miles away. Rust brown brush spreads along the roadside. On the hills, grass the color of dried blood. I pass rocky bluffs, streaked and broken, Like old cathedrals.   On the radio, classical music and jazz Turn into country and talk. These are the days of battles and shadows, One station tells me, These are the days to make Him strong. Troy is 22 miles away.   Further south, fog settles in, The road in front of me disappears. I drive into it, 9 miles left to Troy, Namesake of a fallen city, Only clouds like smoke, or drifting ash In sight.

It’s time we settled some things. You were not a very nice cat. You were not a comforting presence in the house. You avoided everyone except me, And sometimes even me. You hissed at the young daughter of a friend and made her cry. She didn’t even try to touch you, She just came too near. Not cool.   I rescued you from a shelter. You’d been abandoned, pregnant, Or got pregnant after abandoned, Had your litter. After that I took you home. You lived with me for 22 years, Moody, aloof, unsettled. You had no favorite part of the house, No one place I could always count on finding you. Sometimes you’d disappear.  I wouldn’t see you for hours. Were you hiding, or looking for a way out? One friend said you were probably digging a tunnel. You were like a ghost on the premises.   Other times you’d lie in the middle of the room, In everyone’s way, Daring someone to approach too close So you could demonstrate your displeasure. After a while, being there was enough. You no longer had ...

Measure first, 2 ft, 4, ft, 6 ft, Marking the spots with a peculiarity, the flat carpenter’s pencil. Swift strokes on rough wood, with or against its grain. That feels good: In the business of precision you can be quick, almost casual, for once. Still you know the exact spot the nail enters Which your hammer will bless with its blunt truth: The part that takes the shock is named the head. You hit and get hit again and again With/on/for the head.   As the nail enters it feels good, Penetrating block, beam, joint. Hit it hard enough, over and over, And it lasts, Builds a solid structure Around hollow sound: Bang bang, echoing sawdust On the cement, in the breath,   Hammering an ode To your hand, Extension of your head, And to you, nail that you are.   The hammer itself is nothing, Mimics your hand Mimicking the lie of time: What is built well will last. Nothing lasts. Truth is a wavering line On an uneven surface, Casual, sketched over splinters, Or the too-quick blow that ...

No one else sits in the yard Where afternoon idles, The sky unwinding slowly, A ribbon beyond reach, The grass murmuring with shadow.   The violet sun is turned away. Glowing flecks of dust glaze the windows. The carpenters down the block Shout and count their tools. They’ve cut enough lengths today, Saws singing like cicadas.   In the dimming light, colors consumed by the hours Fall like flakes of ash from the single elm’s branches. Everything is scooped up, packed away, The measuring complete.   Fugitive memories hover like lazy flies, Melting into the dwindling violet stream. All that is here, now, Is unexceptional And complete.

After the vision test you can see But not well, Fuzzy outlines mostly. The light is shatteringly bright So you wear dark glasses to reduce its glare.  Cool, mysterious dark glasses if you’re lucky. Hey, who is that behind the Foster Grants? A co-worker calls out. Easy jokes and camaraderie, But you’re cut off from everyone for the rest of the day. The world goes on without you fully in it, An icon of isolation.   Your vision has been tested, Found wanting, or approved. They’ve told you which but it feels like both. Your eyes are at once good enough and not good enough To see clearly. It depends on how you look at it. For a while your vision wasn’t yours, it belonged to others, Eye-care specialists.  Professionals of vision. They enclosed it in their machines, They measured its infinitesimal distances. They know more about what you see than you do. They know you can’t see to drive, operate heavy machinery, Or read emotions on a loved one’s mouth. You wear dark glasses to p...

Remembering a whole day lost in the shade of a willow Beside a human-made lake, Designed to look like a lake, harboring imported fish. The dog was there, too, Integral part of what was us, Sniffing the ground where something dead had lain. We found it later, Desiccated skin and boney spine, And tossed it back into its unnatural water.   I should have tied the dog’s leash to a branch of the willow That stretched off camera, toward the future, this moment, Instead of to the trunk with its roots twining downward, Knotting us to that spot in time, Eternal part of the tree’s shadow.   It could still be there, Our willow, by the artificial lake,   Framed against the darkling background Like a painting of Calvary.  

Without ghosts, Your reflection becomes your real face. Trees no longer make a sound like wind On days the wind isn’t blowing. You search in vain through your memory For a favorite color from childhood. Funny name.  But not vermillion. You miss the letter X, wish it would appear more often In books, on signs. Your mornings linger, like all other mornings, Listening to Vivaldi, buttering a muffin, Reaching for your phone. You play with your cup while you catch at indistinct names, Watching something no bigger than a hair fall through your fingers. In it is everything you’ve lost. The world doesn’t care if you’re alone.   Let the ghosts return And fill you up again.

  The ladder wasn’t properly secured So it was no surprise when he fell, Not too far a distance Or end over end, Nothing like that, thank God. Instead it was like he sat down too early, The ground he’d expected to find Not yet ready for him.   I ran to him, my neighbor Of so many years, Words of caution and remonstrance Coming too late, Sounding silly now, But their urgency necessary for some other reason, Perhaps to warn against similar failings In other households nearby.   He was sitting up By the time I reached him, Out of breath and sweating, His eyes shiny With the distance he’d come through, As if he’d been away a long time And didn’t yet realize he was home, Smiling at the surprise Of what he hadn’t expected to see.   It was a smile unlike any I’d seen On his face before. I couldn’t imitate it But I tried As if to say , I’ve seen what you’ve seen, Been where you’ve been, Know everything you know Because we’re neighbors and friends.   Because we’re frien...

This morning I made the bed with yellow sheets In perfect sunlight, Tucking and folding Without concern. In the living room A television commercial announced The world is changing. The world is changing But differently than it said.   I heard voices near the garden outside but saw no one. I listened, trying to understand The language of growing things. Now the day skips forward an hour.  Or more. Everything I have to do Has already been done, But must be done again. The bed neatly made Without anxious thoughts Like before, but with a difference.   I make a corned beef sandwich for lunch Like the kind I used to make, The taste of corned beef Bringing back sensations familiar But not quite the same.   Who am I, really? I’m working on that, All the time.   The perfect sunlight has gone. The sky is grey, Coated with iron. In the distance the spruce trees Whisper like departing guests. Heaven waits to open But remains closed, Sealed inside its mystery, An unbeaten dr...

I heard fireworks on an April evening. I looked but couldn’t see where they were. It was twilight, the sky full of vermillion clouds, Nothing more. I heard the sounds of fireworks. They might have been real.   I went home and put on a record And danced to the music of Beethoven. The light from a table lamp shaped like a pear Shone on a book of matches that lay unopened. The lamp’s yellow shade was cocked like a hat. It had a worn spot on one side That glowed a little brighter, Like a nearly invisible eye.   My tongue sour with beer, I went to bed tired but not enough to sleep. I lay next to the propped-open window, The light from yellow streetlamps in my eyes, Open but not seeing anything, even shadows. I listened for fireworks, Which might have been real, Thinking words that could have been this poem, If I’d written them down in the morning.