Siege
The moon’s playing saint again,
touching the bony head of a wolf
in the gravel turnout across the road.
It’s late, and the archeologist on TV
works to explain a stone spoon
in a mass grave
thousands of years old.
Entertainment, calamity, galaxy—
the landscape knows no difference,
and perhaps they’re the same to me.
And why not? We are now officially
in the business of denying everything.
I’m no longer a boy
putting every spoon in his mouth
before returning them to the kitchen drawer.
My hands have forgotten the pit of earth
that gave birth to my history.
I know now that any one of us
can become the wind in a public space,
something like the shape of a body
whose feet sway just a few feet above the ground.
Taking Stock
There is one corner
in the room
where feathers
and long hairs collect.
When the wind is right,
the sound of boxcars.
A voice
I begin to remember
pushes a wheelbarrow
down the center
of the road.
It is not unlike
the square of light
I trace onto the wall
each day at noon.
All I Did This Morning Was Stare at a Rusted Lure in a Tree
And now I walk to the row
of buckshot mailboxes
in the turnout across the road.
Someone finally moved
into Pete and Cindy’s old place.
I’ve seen them. Soon, they’ll know
the summer well water
smells of burnt eggs,
especially on their side of the draw.
They have the arrogance
of a newly painted barn
when they drive by and wave.
I raise and lower each of the red postal flags
and envy the way the slightest sound
travels downriver.
I can’t remember if eyetooth
applies to people or dogs or both.
I’ve become the kind of man
who defines himself
by a World’s Fair ashtray
filled with pennies and paper clips,
a pair of mismatched dice,
a new sparkplug in its box.
An Offering
If I were the type to look for a sign,
I might turn to the wet Coleman sleeping bag
in the bed of my truck, which is now
a motor lodge for worms and centipedes,
or I might consider the ‘74 De Ville limousine
parked forever in our neighbor’s yard,
an orange lifejacket hung from its boomerang antenna
like a horseshoe thrown by a drunken god
at a company picnic. But I’m not the type.
I am moved, however, to say something
about the alders, which are incandescent bones—
for ten years, while my father got ready for work,
it was my job to shovel the cold ash
from our woodstove and dump it at their feet.
Read four poems by Michael McGriff previously appearing in Terrain.org.
Header photo by Szczepan Klejbuk, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Michael McGriff by Marcus Jackson.