A Language for the Unknown

When your name came across the loud speaker

I stepped away from the truck stop to listen.

Yep! That was your name alright, except with

an unusual rolling of the “r.”  I thought you’d

materialize like a narcotic vapor over one

after waking out of a fainting spell.

A butterfly came down and I kissed it.

I guess that was what I was supposed to do

on the sidewalk, in the moonlight,

with the large trees budding.

A Frisbee landed out in the field

and two pidgins clamored after it.

I handed them each a dollar.

I started to feel you were lost somewhere.

That somewhere misplaced was the luggage

that held your beautifully folded arms.

I reached down for your razor,

followed an onion to your feet,

its core pealed down to the tearful end.

My Quiet Witness

Sometimes I wonder whether

my watery eyes or my knee ache

is because I kicked out the crutches

from some poor lass or was a good runner

who cheated.  The light keeps blinking

like cat in a bag drowning after my father

driving away from his wife, my mother

losing her license, my brother

unable to breathe at the end.

The whole bathroom sinking.

Giving us no other substitute.

A spyglass hoping to be evident.

A curl in the middle of a book

separating the epic tug after we’ve

been digging through the music.

God, sometimes I wish I’d be

forgiven long enough to sit down

on the rock I’ve been stitching

and convey the worn reason

the remainder of the night

looks at us with labyrinthine

perplexion. Or the real remembrance

 of things past and not some inability to translate

the title beats down on our canvas hearts,

but that is enough drumming for me tonight. 

Read the Poems --- Read the Book ---please and thank you

https://www.amazon.com/Flicker-Among-Sparrows-Carl-Tillona/dp/1541233077/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485941126&sr=8-1&keywords=a+flicker+among+sparrows

Into Evening

     on involuntary

                          platforms 

     steel rain 

           

  deafly

                   upon the minnows
  

                the water diving
sun darts

                 hold onto the air

   
      love  amid the evening

     
              other flashes

Crater

I need to say something soon before

my voice becomes a muffle and then

like stones in the stream bed.  The tips

of the hydrangea flowerets are blue

paint curls in the heart, color gently

flakes at the center.  Then comes the white

hot feeling of rolling an ankle over a stone.

Pollen dusts over the face of a stream.

The last stars from a crater of stars pass overhead.

I think, tonight, but the limitless

blue message of thought keeps passing me

like a downed plane flapping its baleful

advertisement.  Its impact like a good

person who cannot live up to an expectancy.

The letter carrier carries the apology.

I want to report the disappearance

to the milkman, but he is gone.

He has no business here.

Lacunal Contents

Today is not the day, and tomorrow
the landscape will not be ready
And the next day and the day after that, rare fruit.
Eventually, you stop wearing your vest.
The lighthouse lights on only odd
days of the week.

Something drops, like a pebble
behind every good gesture
and at the end of the evening
all good gestures drop
without the proper postage
like the morning paper
unto a yard
of a family who has been on vacation
for months and will never return.

And at the end of the evening
others drop like clothes

distracted by warmer places, and stopping
to rub the fur of dandelions from their eyes
drop the questions of their wives into a bird's throat.

A cloud drops gently over the landscape of the day.

This is just one occurrence in the processions of mysteries. 

Mistakes and Echoes of Mistakes

The rain cannot
separate now from the river.
Just as your dog
cannot separate itself
from night.
Her tumors have
finally stopped growing
and the thick necklace
is complete.
And no matter
how simple you
cannot comprehend
the ocean at night
with a sea of luminescent
jellyfish in it.
But maybe, I suppose
in the dark
one might
recognize the swallowing
the fading absence
or the moving fins that have not
even evolved enough to protect you.
You see where this is going.
There are other reasons why
we bury things that culture
and anthropologists have failed
to figure out.  It has more
to do with ourselves
digging things up than we think.
But now it is time to dig
ourselves through
the damp darkness once again
to listen to an inadvertent song
and drink in the cold air.
Already we
are beginning to feel safe.
We are beginning
to feel the language returning
to the pages of the book
whose words had only
left for a moment
had blurred where
we stopped seeing them.