Four Poems by Steve West
Depression ware, American Beauty, I think. Furniture, antique, I assume. Junk In boxes across the yard. Old Mrs. Johnson has moved To Green Lawn. (Good Lord amighty, she must have been 110! She was old when I was just a kid. My, yes! She’s been a widow for 50 years. You remember ol’ Freelon Johnson, used to run A sawmill down round Floral? That’s his widow just now dying? Good God! She was past old.) I bid on a box of pink dishes. Buy it for a few dollars. But I feel guilty at this pilfering Through a person’s life. I leave early, cradling My culpability In cardboard. ................................................................... AUGUST It is oppressive, this heat so yearned for Last winter. Marigolds survive. I water them every day, Watch wasps come down for drinks. Frost will take care of them. Days of heat, nights of humid silence, While the lights of the baseball Field contend with treetops. I sit in the yard, waiting until cooler Midnight air moves in. And think of those wasps, Seeking warmth of window Panes on October mornings. ............................................................... I WANDER AGAIN TO THE HOME OF MY CHILDHOOD There’s a dirt path to Mt. View Like a string through dead leaves. Daffodils mark the boundary of our house place. The storm cellar looks surprised. A tunnel of mosquitoes down the well. Barb wire joins me, Wanders off into a pine grove. A field of horses crop grass, Switching flies that aren’t there yet. Next to the gray ghost of a shed, A ’54 Ford with sumac Sprouting from the windshield. .................................................................. NOCTURNE I think of nights of music; Symphonies, distant, Remote as youth. Jazz from well-lit rooms, Brittle as love, Reflections of discontent Into solitary corners. Folk songs, measured by chords On old guitars and bass, Refrains of disillusionment In ¾ time. I rehearse those nights too often, With thoughts like curtains Idly tossed by the hot breeze Of a late July night. |
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Steve West grew up in the Ozarks of Arkansas, went to college in Mississippi, and now teaches in Tennessee. He says he's "totally Southern." West has published poems in recent numbers of Prairie Poetry, Phantasmagoria, Number One.
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