Poetry
Houston, Beth
Beth Houston Dad 1 see him only as the darkness taking a long drag on the end of another summer day, the glow of a cigarette among other cigarettes at the end of the driveway, among the slow red...
...His could be the sign language guiding a plane down the runway...
...the implied hand of a god flicking a sun across space, creating a new one with the metal click of a lighter...
...wheels of fire spinning in the ash evening parked along the curb...
...All night I lie awake burning...
...In the sun where I am relevant I discover the dead fireflies in the grass...
...Whatever their charred soles crush the wind carries a bit further: small talk of tackle, tools, women, insurance policies- I can but surmise- reaches me as a thin drone of smoke...
...Beth Houston Dad 1 see him only as the darkness taking a long drag on the end of another summer day, the glow of a cigarette among other cigarettes at the end of the driveway, among the slow red pulses drawing breath, letting it go, defying strokes and cancer...
Vol. 117 • November 1990 • No. 19
