How do I go
When my absence melts you
How do I turn away
When I am immersed in you

What else can I see
If you are all my vision
What can draw my mind
If you are each thought

Are you truly alone
While you are surrounded by fears
Are you left without voice
While you scream in silence

Is there a limit to my rekindlings
As I extinguish with each last look
Is it possible to breathe
As lungs fill with endless calls to you

At what point could there be too much us
Though there is never enough
At what point is pain exhausted
Though the void of apart is limitless

Where is the end of empty
Can it be found when we are cleft
Where do we cease to touch
Can we be disjoined at any point

Why do we bleed with stilled hearts
Must away be bottomless
Will actuality ever come right
Do we survive, or die trying

When I was younger
I slept in the top bunk
over my older brother

- Pretty soon we’re all going to die -
he was fond of saying
while we listened to Credence
Clearwater Revival on an old turntable
with a penny he taped to the arm
to make it sound like a $100

Pretty soon he got me saying the same
words, like moon, mosquitos and darkness
were in his ear, he’d have dreams of
naked women washing his feet
and sparrows looking out of his eyes

He hollered at old man death
when he was wanting some shuteye

- Nobody on earth is like me -
he’d wake up shouting not meaning
to disturb my sleep

He said - I am the white piano
they threw off the bridge -
- the snake bed and the shade tree -
- I am something, yes-sir-eee -

- I’m something not everybody wants
to believe - he’d say sipping on whiskey
bought from a woman up the holler

He told death to - kiss his white *** -
then holler at me to get out of bed
and go trim the grass around the stone
angels planted up in the high pasture.

Was I ten?
I think?
Was it December?
that I became distracted
by the snow's
falling
silence?

The ******'s hills lure me
off
the curving path
toward home--
I surely know
my way--
though
path invisible
snow beyond my knees

Now
but for the patterns of the trees
that etch the skyline
I would be lost...
My love....
...were it not for those
I would be lost

My feet lift depths
Impassible
The snow
impossible--
could it be this deep?
could take this much?
should trudge so far?
beyond
my depth
my breath
a fog-- of
all
I own?

I am wading in the white
down-warmth
Sweat
in spite--
of freezing
of parental threat...
Wind brings tears
to reddened cheeks
Toes, long since numb
...and I am late-- as always

Wipe my nose on sleeve
Pull mittens with my teeth
fumbling
tissues damp in pocket deep

I have gone so far
too far
into the ******'s windings
with my mind

and night is falling
Night is watching
from the hemlocks
now behind
my purpose--
only
in
the gray of sky
the ghostly silence
of the moon rise

I don't know where night came from
How it got here
why I came
only that I want to linger--
longer
than that twinge of fear

Listen...to
soft tick
of snow
against itself

Wind in white pines
saddest of living things
begs a loan of winter winds

turning a corner
my headlights catch
a great horned owl
sailing through the darkness
wings outstretched
gliding on a cold north wind
a phantom conjured
by unyielding hunger
set aloft and still verging
from shadow to shadow
hours later
in the warmth of my room


Tom Spencer © 2018

The brown mound of earth
slightly elevated
to support the tree
the children played with
but our parents hated.

The big old gnarly thing
outer skin
always barking
rough against
my young flesh,
but I still climbed it.

The thick branch
that hung out
and let me lay back
to read a book
in privacy,
despite the threat
of gravity.

The way I relaxed
free from all below
an unobtrusive
lonely ******
who was outside
to escape
the black hole
of a home
where darkness reigned.

The pleasant wooden memory
like a ship at sea
which carried me
to my present
where all those
childhood dreams
are obscured
by time’s
unalterable course.