Elegy

Brian Dickson

 

“Memory is our divine aspect.”  —Paul Foreman

                       

             for T. Nordstrom

 

 

I only knew your dwelling, the swell

of rusted car doors rising out of the earth.

If there ever was a womb I could rest,

I found it in the center of the living room.

 

A scouler willow clutches blithe tears.

And for one night we grazed

the landscape of your poems:

the six-day war, the sacred feminine.

 

And after we smoked divine grass

your poems hung

on the tree’s branches raised

to the skylight along with the aromas

 

of whiskey, baby spinach, chilé con carne

and flour tortillas. Gold fish from your pond

flipped and dashed at the arrival

of so much blue overhead.

 

Your beard to your toes hugs

your lithe flesh, its tail swinging

you at the trunk.  You, howler monkey

snatching your chance at the golden fig tree.

 

We are starving for these places.

Every thing circling on the willow

like an infant’s mobile,

within reach.

  

        


Brian Dickson has lived mostly in the southwest working various jobs and now find himself living in Colorado teaching at various grade levels.  He plans on living in the West before it fills up.  His poetry has appeared Santa Clara Review, Switchback, Goodfoot, The Blue Mesa Review, and others.

 

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