XENITH

10/30/98
by Robert Lietz

Driving east at Halloween, hearing the news from Kosovo,

the news of gay-bashing in Laramie

Was it winking or was it rain on the cement

prompting the kids toward Halloween?

Were the neighbor homes and lights returning

to some order – assuming another

way toward precedent – here – where

the candidates stop for chops / the sniper

counts down shots like therapies. And the stacks

/ pallets – the scrap tubing / tanks –

as always and at best conditional – the littering

hues and smoke and rain there

on the pavement – and this trucker now –

missing the lanes cut down – taking

a barrel or two off to the side before he’s noticed –

burning the linings still – deciding

late and North and one more way toward Avalon.

So what if the corn’s been

taken off as scheduled? So what if the news –

more shrill and choiring reprisals –wears

the looks of streets where kids learn quick

and signature – if the rubberbullets –

spent in clearing off the corners – assume

our attention now – because this weather

has to quit? The autumn leaves spin down

like trump where no one’s counting.

Was that a boy spread-eagle on the fence-wire

when I noticed? I’m climbing that hill

two blocks – to that house across from Schmitt’s –

enjoying this march toward Halloween –

these winds the kids climb vanishing – pulling

the world up around – away from

the blocks cats dig – meaning to locate industry

and something again besides – where

the slopes drop off to pay-per-views and buyers.

It’s autumn and after and ahead –

where the winds shook down the many leaves

into that field. It’s fall in the smoke

and barrel fires – in the sooty rorshachs

roofing country houses – speaking necessity

and need – in the grid-iron iconography

/ the banked leaves the last of daylight’s

poking under – that witch and her sister –

dressing the shedding oak and phone-pole –

proving there’s no worse risk than flying

in the dark / than their own

free -fall – when the nightmares

snap on them!

*

So the forest greens and forest scarlets

draw us home – finding the routes

by heart – the shape of that doe – a step

or two steps shy in tractor light –

spilled toward invisible and less – a part

of the evidence no less – a child

no less / and something else besides –

lost to the rust-hued earth and spans

of treated lumber – besides this sudden

expensive red – haunting the range of loss

and optical adjustments. Some evening’s

desire’s just about as much as we can stand.

I’m thinking of you Elizabeth –driving

to you Elizabeth – remembering

your Monday eyes / the weight of a week between

/ another Friday’s traveling – calming

myself with Porky’s music and Pittsburghese.

And paying these debts in Time –

seeing these lights in neighbor homes

through thinning branches – the leaves

as they drop around / blow down among

the limbs that scatter them – figures

that rise from smoke and count on our decoding.

But what have the colors ever said –

pumpkin and noir / the garage flags ever said

/ the news as it was – behaved

as the old enemies expected – kids shimmering

as kids will – seeing the kids on fields

where the legends made to play – looking

like runners-up – in their assailable attire –

and speaking the scores another time –

a sentence the past accelerates –

believing autumn’s just ahead – even

when rain quits – and in the hearts

that urge the stories

to strong forms.

***

Robert’s poems have appeared in many journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Sweden and U.K, including Agni Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah. Seven collections of poems have been published, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press,). At Park and East Division ( L’Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press,) The Inheritance (Sandhills Press,) and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems .

He has completed several print and hypertext (hypermedia) collections of poems for publication, including Character in the Works: Twentieth-Century Lives, West of Luna Pier, Spooking in the Ruins, Keeping Touch, and Eating Asiago & Drinking Beer.

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