Poetry Living Room
All poems copyright Dave Hedenstrom 2013
All poems copyright Dave Hedenstrom 2013
Walking Along a Beach on Lake Superior
Waves have left a line of benign debris: sticks and feathers along fine sand. Birch bark scrolls appear now and then like blank revelations. Offshore, a sailboat is moored and back there kayakers are beginning and ending journeys. Walking the wild beach we try to put words to middle age, you and I, my love, without much luck. Looking down, we pick up any pebbles that catch our eyes. Losing ourselves in stones. The sun breaks through for a moment; for a moment we glisten. Leave It to Leslie
Tyriek got metaphysical in 6th grade Civics: Tyriek, front runner for official Class Clown asked no one in particular "How did we get here?" Leave it to Leslie (that's "Less," not "Lez," she'll tell you with her barbed-wire voice) -- Leave it to Leslie to say in her Don't Be Stupid way "We're here by the grace of God!" |
Storm Windows
The cold presses us inward. We have storm windows to trade for screens, quaint, vestigial, battered but durable, pocked with character (and on the ground floor only, thank God). Fulfilling this ritual I can't help but think of my grandmother's second story storms -- frames enameled glossy black, glass wavy with the drift of time, raised number disc on each matching each to its place -- how I'd grasp both sides along the bottom and hope the top would catch above as I leaned out over the plunging stucco, big window wobbling for balance and somehow always, like a tightrope waker, making it. The Trick
Stuck at the muddy bottom of a lovers' quarrel, they sit, stunned, at the kitchen table, heavy as sunken treasure. He does not look at her; she does not look at him. His eyes follow one of her hands as it slowly turns a catalogue's pages. It's a ladies' shoes catalogue that came in the mail uninvited, and lies, for no special reason, on the table between them. His eyes see the same pages, but upside down. His mind notes the dozens of pretty shoes -- their gracious curves, their myriad colors and patterns, how they appear to float on the page. And now his mind performs a desperate trick, an escape act that almost works: it sees they are not shoes at all, but tropical fish swimming among the improbable scenery of sleek satisfied women and their handsome men.
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