Four poems by Mark Terrill

PARABELLUM

In July enough rain to get the stream
flowing in the other direction;
but sufficient sunlight to raise the heads
of drooping flowers seen through windows
unwashed in all these years,
set in walls from which the paint
is peeling off in palm-sized flakes.

In August a metallic-blue-green dragonfly
hovering above fallen rose petals.
In September a tiger-striped dragonfly
helicoptering along the boxwood hedge.
In October the eyes feasting on the fiery yellows,
blood-reds, and rusty ochres of the leaves
of more trees than one could ever count.

Magic is always black or white but autumn
is a splintered spectrum of colliding colors
no cubist could possibly conceive.
In November the mind roaming along corridors
of memory hung with images of transience
vested with the wily sort of grace only seen
backwards in a mirror.

The acrid smell of burning bridges
in no way unpleasant. The incipient crackle
of the automatic weapons just more static
in the lurid background. One lung full of hate,
the other full of love; in one breath I can say
all that needs to be said. Yesterday is legend,
today is allegory, tomorrow is myth.

 

CODA

You see a shape you
read a phrase you obey
a law you have a dream
which is very bewildering
yet makes no end of sense—
you walk the wavering line
between sign and enigma
the jittery tension between
what can and what cannot
what will and what will not
sending a crackling current
buzzing through the void—
wait a good long while
before you place that period
at the end of that sentence
and thus sealing it up like
some dark musty tomb
or do you trust yourself
to put a caesura in the
middle of all that
momentariness?

EQUIPOISE REDUX

Snow all day then
clouds breaking up at evening—

golden strip along horizon
where blazing orb of sun

is seen through spidery
tree-branch silhouettes—

quivering coppery-orange light
and then it’s gone.

I’m at the edge
but the edge is in the middle

between the edges of
knowing and unknowing.

 

FINAL CUT

The very last time you
shovel out the cat litter box—
The very last time you
drive down your parents’ driveway
on your way to the airport—
The very last time you
order a gin and tonic and look
a beautiful woman in the eye—
The very last time you
peer into the empty mailbox and
see that spider looking back at you—
The very last time you
place your toothbrush in its holder
and turn off the bathroom light—
What is it about your self
and its passage through time
that you don’t already know
right this very minute?