Like Malice I tugged a stone from my cell of soil, My personal earth, curved and grainy in the Bottom of its pock. I saw them — tumbling, They were. And I heard them — cursing, they were. And I was their god, and my glance Hardly touched their humped and hurrying backs As they set about –and without Hesitation– the rebuilding of The lanes and homes and secret sinks of kin And kind, sparing neither glare nor stare For me, the shaker of their roots, but Instead, ran and rang their tiny bells And called a convocation that could point Their group towards a fresh beginning in Tomorrow’s rays.…

Rest Home The air was cool in the shop when we Walked into it, through it, and it carried The heartbeat sounds in its own regular Atmosphere. We passed among narrow Aisles, and we stopped at last before One of them, arrested by how still Its pendulum hung. The others all moved And swept and tocked, but this one was silent And immobile, its face a testament To its own end. We adored It, knowing that it had grown still While all alone, away from all eyes That had ever noted it or Admired it or dismissed it. No one witnessed its final swing, its last Hand’s movement. And then…

Grand Tour The kitchen was the room where they were most themselves, and they were there now, standing at the counter. She spooned sugar into her coffee and stirred it, watching his face as she did so. She smiled at the creased expression of concentration as he pressed the toaster handle down, the two pieces of bread disappearing into the machine. The toast popped up and she clapped and he carefully extracted the slices and buttered them with oleo from the tub,   and he cut them diagonally the way she liked her toast. She held onto his arm as they walked to the kitchen, and they sat together in…

Holy Innocents There were several of us in the airy house, one or two to a cage and tended well by the withered man and his quiet wife. We thrilled to the gentle care they gave us, and we had forgotten that we had ever flown free in the open sky with its wonders and its hazards. We sang out our gratitude, and we loved to speak to the lined faces that peered up   at us when they spilled food and sweet water into our cups or changed the paper on our floors. We hung in our small homes in the ivory-colored light that sifted in through the paper…

Never Be Understood This morning I stood at our fence, flanked by frisky dogs and listening to the crow-calls and the lowing black cattle, feeling God’s good breath in my thinning hair, and I loved every caress of the living world around me. And I thought back to a sultry East Texas afternoon when my wife and I visited a state park, trying to glean a few hours of respite from our suburban rushings. We had barely settled onto the concrete picnic table and unloaded our feast when a car pulled into the spot adjacent ours. The doors flapped open and the occupants spilled out onto the woodchips that served…

On The Shoulder Time has tricked us And we will not be victors Our boasts have stalled along the side And our engines are ticking as they cool. We don’t want to read the gauges And our tools are rusted and jumbled We sit in our seats still, though Our eyes never leaving the rear view mirror. We are sorry. We are reading the map Of resignation. We cannot find our route But we remember where we started from. Tow us to the garage, mister. Take us home. ~ S.K. Orr

The horse was on fire, but only his eyes The shed was on fire but only the panes The field was on fire but only the pond. ~ by S.K. Orr

Her Holy Meal I tripped on the threshold and sprawled into the fodder on the floor, unable to ever stand again. In the black barn I passed an hour’s year, face in the stalks, too spent to push the ground away with my beaten arms, and I approached the brink of endless, endless tenebrae with a coat of feigned relief. It came to me after a time, the heavy quake, the machine song, an acre’s issue of stones in a polishing drum. And when I managed the strength to lift one eyelid, ponderous as a stove-lid, my seeing her was simultaneous with my scenting her. Above me, near me, enormous…