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Against The Harvest
Against The Harvest It’s what I never feared that has come to devil Me the most. Sent back and now standing Here, round this road-crook,waiting for his Distant get to finally make it past me On just the right night. How many of the Old ones told me he never meant me any Blood, never cast forward to the ashes Of decision, the thing that followed him After he glanced down into that shower- Filled stump on that half-moon night, And what She had thrown to him came forth. Standing now, standing ever, I am Rooted to this patch and cannot roam, Companion to the possums who try to climb…
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Accomplished By Needles
Up before dawn with two hungry dogs, one of them also quite urinacious (the spotted menace has no such weakness, being of the Ancient Order of the Iron Bladder), and Mrs. Orr prepared breakfast tacos. We ate and talked of west Texas and her tough people and her immutable wind that scrapes across her lion-colored hide. Jinx and I walked and watched cows bent to their unceasing cropping of grass, working their magic of transforming green blades into white milk. In the un-sunned early hours, we could hear the moist tugging of the grass into the soft lips, and an unseen owl in the enormous oak tree asked his eternal…
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Morning Walk With Haiku
Arrow of a dog Speckled like a roadrunner Waiting for Acme. *** The dew on the road Keeps the dust from rising up Our passage is clean. *** Lopped-off limbs on pine Sockets stare at me like eyes Did they build or burn? *** Eleven birds perch Carolina wrens hail me We share a Sunday. *** Bird bath is unused Needles float on calm surface Clouds get reflected. *** Incongruity Red bird on satellite dish Things seen and unseen. ~ S.K. Orr
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Cold Stove
Cold Stove It crouches over there, arms wrapped around the knees drawn up against its chest, dark and mute and staring with its one great eye, reminding me that time has come round again, that I am unprepared, that I have spent my hours staring instead of rending. You are late, it whispers, and it knows its words have hit their mark because it sees me frowning at it, aware, me and my less-than-guilty-but-more-than-chagrined shrug. It knows I’m already casting my thoughts forward to a rushing day when my wife will hold the ladder, when my wife will call to me to be careful while I fit together the long…
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Easter, A.D. 2020
Easter, A.D. 2020 So this is what legacy looks like The offspring of those who raised hymns while lions Tore their holy flesh now cower within Their antiseptic catacombs, heroes Devouring the crumbs of Nero’s hourly updates. Will they write epistles on toilet paper? Will they anoint themselves with hand sanitizer? They may as well — such empty sacramentals Well depict the razed rubble of faith. ~ S.K. Orr
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Transfer Of Ownership
Transfer of Ownership He signed the title, handed over the keys Watched the old truck roll across the grass Then saw the nose-prints, felt his heart seize Her last memento on the passenger window’s glass. ~ S.K. Orr
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Woes Rise
Woes Rise Is it a good hour for praying? Aren’t my hands folded right? The face of your boy rubs the pad of my thumb The corpus knows just what I’m saying Here, in the golden dark, smoking Woes in tendrils rise to Cause a watching spider to cough Upon his hidden wagon-wheel In my not-so-secret chamber. ~ S.K. Orr
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New Each Year
New Each Year The first day of school each year and my attention was up front, not on my teacher but on the blackboard. Was it possible to get it that clean with a bucket and sponge, or did they coat it with some special chalk- defying paint? The moment would come when she – almost always a she – would take up the cigarette in her fingers and touch it to the coal surface and stroke it in rhythmic loops and sweeps across, and after that it was never pure again. The ghosts of all the parsings or diagrams would float beneath those things she gave each day, and…
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Thirty-Five Degrees
Thirty-Five Degrees Not quite rain yet not quite snow it drips from naked branches like the tears of winter’s grief below. The slumbering soil’s sense is heightened, soaked and silent in the weeks before the voice beneath it speaks. ~ S.K. Orr
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Sad Serene
The sad, serene lakes of my youth the cypress knees like temples rising out of the tea-brown waters, the golden ladder of heaven propped at a forty-five degree angle from window to table, and I could see graduated beings lifting and withdrawing in the moss. ~ by S.K. Orr