Standing Under the Blue Bridge
by T.L. Stokes





If you must take me away
in the blue heron's gray coat.

He always comes above me,
surprisingly uninvited,

makes my loneliness jump and quiver
to see him again.

He is my totem I never asked for,
never was assigned.

I just know with glory
and a certainty

he is my great, great grandfather,

he is a piece of God,

he is the inside lid of the omen-maker.

When he claps
those great bridges together,

I am dead,

I am born.

If you must, take me away
this way,

when evening is still virgin and silent.






first published in Snow Monkey,
by Ravena Press

c2011 T.L. Stokes (all rights reserved)

Murmuration


Quick! While my heart is still upside down
clutching at the marvel of a glossy sky,
the purity of flying
connected to thousands of wings
tipping
in all directions

at once.




for a taste of murmuration ~
http://www.wimp.com/murmurationphenomena/

The Viking Field




First light comes over the last
sleeping plate of stars.

Coyote hunting calls
into my dream and as it runs into the field
the pack begins to celebrate.

Jagged vibrating song
awakens some wild cell
inside of me

and I walk to the window
hoping to see the blur of their bodies
through the grass and expiring leaves,

but they dance in the far corner
of the field beyond our eyes.
Raven is hungry,

his raspy voice
lifts after the howling.

Stacy and I and the dogs walk the field
later hoping to find the bones
of what they were singing about.

Now night fills the air with its
dark light. The moon is a white
and polished knife. Hungry scavenger,
mute witness,

how my heart is drawn inexplicitly

to you. I come from the night

of the Viking, strangely changed,

the coyotes, the raven.

When I can see nothing else,
you carve a part of my sky.

The black dog leads me back
to the only warm thing, a lantern
opening doorways before us,

like a void we enter,
into room after foggy room
of light.







~~c2011 T.L. Stokes (all rights reserved)

1994





Color of Clothes



There is a voice rising from the earth, eight hundred thousand.
From the black one hundred days wild dogs slink. The sun
clutches the cloudless sky unable to hide its eyes. Rwanda
is a burden the earth cannot keep. Sleep, sleep. The air is a river.
The cry that rose up is an unhappy stone. We forget we are
connected. Your face, your child is mine. I mourn who I thought
were strangers. It could be my mother dying I begged you to carry.
What do the walls of the church say to each other? I am the voice
of their spreading moss. I think the land welcomes a little wind
to blow the sand. A blade of grass. Something, another color to
remind us the photos are not just black and white. I think
I am blind now that the fabric is the only color coming
from the dead, the relaxing bones, doll faces, the zigzag
of unfolding fiber.




Dr. James Orbinski




A boy of a man, skinny and definitive, stands talking with some people.
He could be your son. If you watch his eyes they become larger,
you could fall into the things he’s seen. I watched the stories come alive,
and somehow he made friends with nightmares, and when he opens
his mouth, the victims of genocide have a voice. The woman lay
bleeding to death from the places where her breasts were,
her ears were gone, seed splashed on thighs. Stripes from
the machete were a broken sun across her face. The doctor,
began to stitch up what he could and pulled a little too tightly
on her skin, and she reached out gently touching his arm. He
looked at her and saw she was a woman, her wounds, and he
turns his face slightly to the right as the camera keeps shooting,
his eyes go there, that far off look, into the innocence of a
memory that continues to burn him.




The Light That Falls On All of Us




I want to bring some light into the poem. I want to bring light
into all the broken places in history, what it means to be human.
We separate ourselves from each other. I want to make sense
of this. However my mind is silent. I sit in the great room after
dinner, the black dog sleeps. A week ago half a sourdough moon
hung in the sky. All the stars clung to their mother. Last night when
I got home, I walked the dog out into the field and above our heads
swirled the ghost lights.

Across the world in Rwanda, in a small stark building

at the victim's memorial, one of two survivors from that field,

spends the rest of his life digging and preserving bodies. He

pours lime over the threads and bones. Puts them on a long table.

Tenderly fingers a necklace. He hungrily keeps the doctor there

as long as possible, sharing the beauty and horror of what he finds.

He wants a witness. Someone to listen with him, to all the ghosts

who follow, pointing at the next place to dig.






~~~ c2011 T.L. Stokes (all rights reserved)

Shades of Light and Darkness



Some days I want to be a darkhorse.
I will write only about bones and skeletons;
about the scent of an abandoned house,
the walls fall slowly inward;
how rafters are the last rotting layer
of dust and broken lace.

I want you to see how the light drifts down,
how voices in the floor boards
rise up in the throat of crows.

Other days, I live with angels. Eagles lend
their wings. Each flower in the far field
has its own voice, each an unspoken name.
Dragonfly darts in its necklace flight. You there,
come over here. Stand with me silent in the evening.
The circle of giants around us bow their heads. The grass
is wet. The last thing we see is the field
retreating into blackness.

Wait. It is not all. Overhead the stars point in all directions.
It is the next thing. It never ends. Climb with me into the loft
and we will sleep.




~~~ c2011 T.L. Stokes (all rights reserved)

Frog in the Gutter



Base notes twist from the gutter
of the farm house, on the hill overlooking
the long field, where in the morning
the beaming face of the sun
slips between the tall firs,
and here is where the magic
happens, a gold pathway
opens along one edge of the field.
A narrow strip of rising light
in the expired towers
of summer grass, and a few
exploded dandelions,
lamp posts
offering their own
brief flame.