Rehash X s 4 A Love Song
always
there were cows across the hardtop
like statues except for their jointed jaws
and intimacies they shared with the corn
secrets like cud to chew on later
we lay down in the broken barn
a shadowed prison abandoned with shafts of moonlight
a shabby pony ranged
and swayed near the cracked steps
did I imagine a tail a mane or was
your hair tangled in the web of my fingers
we paired like cows pair and unpair
in hay and hair and maybe moonsilk
how slow the road winds and
strains beyond each blind curve
I have not forgotten you
though the barn is rot and the green leaf ash and bone
leeward the sheltering fields
lean toward the gloam their backs
caped in mists hunched
before the harvest a whipping whir
a sharpness I have touched the corn gone down
bleached and bent at season’s end
you left to write
and in a golden month sent
your first mystery brimmed
with battered barns and sallow grasses and
threads of silken hair laid down upon unmapped backs
I retrace the pocked paths
on these nights when the high road forks
hear me I am humming in the rustle
* like a bird on the wire I am singing your folk song
I have tried in my way ——-
_______________________________________-[is this dash really needed?]
*Bird On The Wire
Leonard Cohen
The Yellow Book Without Words
a haibun
I wanted to steal the yellow book about shells. It was slick and smooth and had such pretty pictures. Not that I was interested in shells. The librarian asked if I was old enough to read the text, like it
was porn or something salacious. I felt strange but I stood my ground. Of course I couldn’t read it.
I was eight. I could barely reach it on the corner shelf. But that wasn’t the point. Its aesthetic spoke volumes to my underdeveloped senses. Anyway, I checked it out and brought home. I coveted its feel.
It was sensual and visually seductive, although I knew nothing about those areas. I kept it longer than two weeks and had to pay a fine, or my mother did, That was trouble.
I wish I had stolen the yellow book. Stealing has an edge, a fine sharpness that doesn’t cut.
Possession is transitory; ownership sublime. I could have shown my granddaughter the creamy pages
of painted shells .[space before period ok?] taken her tiny finger and let her trace the contours as you would on a fogged window.
I would tell her this is where it all begins, not with knowledge but with touch, the page seduced
between the tips of your fingers. What we remember what we pass on what we steal.
The library is torn down. The books have vanished. Memory is a harsh regret and loss ,[space before comma ok?]
a warehouse of shells in a yellow book you should have stolen.
How can you possibly know what to pocket until it jumps into your hand from a dark recess or
what you will keep when you have passed the last road sign and there is no right or left
just forward toward the yellow book.
thief
the pearled belly
of a shucked oyster
LOUISE VIERA writes, “I have no printed accolades, just a few people passing through that have had faith in my work. For over 40 years I have lived in cottages tucked on side roads. The one overlooking the bogs is where I raised my daughter and rescued dogs. I have been writing since I was 14, mostly poetry. I have dabbled in photography and believe different mediums should bleed into each other. I live in Bridgewater, Mass. with my three remaining rescues and where I continue to write and enjoy my grandchildren. Life is good.”