Sandman
The sandman brings
sand to put in my sandwich.
He brings it from
the nearby beach.
It’s as fierce as
fine salt in life’s
dwindling hour glass,
thin-waisted sandpaper
thinning down our ways,
throwing sand in the clockwork
that ticks out our days.
Sand rasps between toes,
sticks fast to our feet,
grows castles on the beach
where no grass grows.
Seven, lucky seven,
those clouds close to heaven,
but beware the sandbox
if you count up to eight.
Walker
It’s as good as a walker, this shopping cart.
I set my heart on finding one and when I do
I hang on to the handle and goad myself
onward, up the supermarket ramp.
I hate it when people to see me like this,
body and confidence broken by my fall.
For when I fall there’s no safety net,
no security, just an old man lying hurt.
A leaf on a tree, I shake in the breeze.
I pause for thought, catch my breath,
then struggle forward, caught like a high-
wire dancer in the spotlight, my heart in my
mouth, trying not to look down, or fall,
struggling on, fighting the good fight.
Hastings
A cloud on the horizon
no bigger than a small boy’s hand
turns into a sail and then
a sailing fleet,
an armada of hostility
sailing towards our shores.
Shield upon shield the shield wall
binds itself together,
becomes impregnable
Loud the clamor,
the raising of voices,
the heavens split asunder
by a sharp hail of arrows,
closer the enemy now,
and arrows become spears
their sharp heads
tumbling from the turbulent sky.
Fate hangs now on a single arrow
protruding from the royal eye.
Faith falters.
The shield wall, firm at first,
breaks now and the house carls,
one by one,
fall like corn
beneath sharpened blades,
to wither and die as all men die.
Help!
The world turns full circle
and my mother is on the phone.
It’s four AM. “Help me!” she cries,
from the far side of the Atlantic.
Her ship is sinking fast and she’s
nine sheets to the wind.
“I’ll stick my head in the oven,”
she says, “and turn on the gas.”
What can I say? What can I do?
She makes so many threats.
She’s crying “Wolf!” and her words
now bounce off this duck’s back.
Yet still I wake at night to hear
her whispered words, and they still
chill with their razor’s edge of
“Help me! Help! Please help!”’
Cramp
(Jackpine Sonnet)
Late last night, lying in bed,
cramp laid siege to my lower limbs.
I crawled out of that bed and stretched,
left leg, right leg, in the bathroom.
Aching still, the fear of more cramp
to come weighed heavy on my mind.
I didn’t want to wake my wife
with panic and alarums, so I slept
in the spare bed in the other room.
A great round moon sailed its pale-
faced boat on a sea of silent clouds.
I lay on the life raft of my bed
and prayed for cramp to stay away
and for the mattress to keep me afloat.
Clare
She moves more slowly
up the slope,
pushing against the hill’s
shallow grain.
I knew so well her
swaying grace,
but now she shuffles
with the drag-
foot limp of the aged,
and aged she has,
like a good wine in
an oaken cask.
Her beauty still stays
in my memory,
lodges in my mind and
I see her as
she was, beautiful
in body, slim,
graceful, a joy to hold
and behold.
Her eyes still sparkle
and she bubbles
still with a champagne
joy that draws
me to her, and still she
enhances each
room she enters, filling
it with light.
Lost
My body’s house has many rooms and
you, my love, are present in them all.
I see you here and there, glimpse your
shadow in a mirror, and feel your breath
brush on my cheek when I open a door.
Where have you gone? I walk from room
to room, but when I seek, I no longer find,
and when I knock, nothing opens. Afraid,
sometimes, to enter a room, I know you are
in there. I hear your footsteps on the stair.
Sometimes your voice breaks the silence.
It whispers my name in the same old way
I remember … how can it be true, my love,
that you have gone, that you have left me
here alone? I count the hours, the days,
and snatch at sudden straws of hope,
embracing dust motes to find no solace
in the sunbeams, salacious as they are,
that drag me from my occasional dreams.
Bearing Witness
Pen on paper,
words falling like tears,
salt waters that erode
the hardest of stones.
This man bears witness
to thought, word, and deed.
He’s the outsider who sees
the interior world
and drags forth its spirit
for others to see,
not painted in paint,
not sculpted in stone,
not a breeze through
bound river reeds,
just words on the page
lined up in thin lines
to flower and flourish
like an army that conquers
the world of the soul,
and leaves fresh footprints
on eternal snow.
I ordered Nobody’s Child on Monday and it arrived on Thursday, two days after A Cancer Chronicle. Two books, two days apart. Wow. Nobody’s Child is a collection of short stories and Flash Fiction that deals with some difficult topics. A couple of the shorter pieces have appeared on these pages and will be familiar to the followers of this blog. Most of the material is new, some of it, very recent. Some of the stories have been published, others have received awards and honorable mentions. A shortened version of the collection, under the same title, was given an Honorable Mention in the David Adams Richards Fiction Prize of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick in 2016.
Let the fiction begin: “… so this is earth day and we light candles in our house and turn off the telly and the computers and sit there reading and writing, watching each other through the flicker of the candle flames, and listening to the sounds of the house, such subtle sounds, the creak of the siding, the click of a door, a blind moving in the room overhead, the tick of the grandfather clock in the hall … and the smoke rises from the candles and makes dark patterns in the stillness of the air … and yet, through the blackness, the bleakness of the candle smoke, a hand reaches out and holds me by the nape of the neck, and thrusts me back into a past which once again has come back to haunt me …”
Nobody’s Child is available on Amazon.
rogermoorepoet 