PoetryMagazine.com

Derold Sligh

			Page 3

FRIENDSHIP IS A WILDERNESS
                for Steve

You can see my light in the eastern skies,

dim as it may be,

just a glowing coal

plucked from a crackling blaze.

From across the plain,

I can see your smoke—

just before the horizon, it always billows

from your camp.

The columns are my comforter.

When loneliness snuffs me out

with its howling hounds of depression,

I look to your smoke.

When I think I can cast mountains

into seas, I look to your smoke

and I am humbled.

If we score big game

or distill a good batch of potato wine

or you are bitten by a brown recluse

or by the memory of a past lover

(the past always has teeth),

I will make the trip

through the brambles,

skipping over streams,

tip-toeing past timber wolves,

swinging on vines across swamps,

through the canyons

where my enemies wait on ledges

with weapons strung and cocked.

Your fire will be ready:

its warmth heals all wounds and afflictions.

Even from this distance,

I can see the plumes rising.

And my light.... If you can even call it that:

faint as it may be,

my hope is to pulsate,

throb like a quasar someday.

Don’t put out that fire, my friend.

In the eastern skies, look for me.

TO NUDITY

When I was younger I sashayed

around the house in earth-brown limbs

and bone-white underwear—

my first exercises in nudity.

My father thought of me

as shameless, said, Brown boy,

put some clothes on before I give you

a spanking on that brown behind!

sadly putting a stop to my nakedness.

When Michelle is naked, I realize how white

she is: a new snow she is, footprintless.

When she’s naked, I realize her heart-

shaped hips, undressed legs around me

and my naked self—my skin nothing

more than her skin in darkness, which is not color;

it is the result of every shade

mixed into one.

My brown body glistening in the kitchen sink

as mother bathed me when I was a baby;

the statue of David in a private garden

of alyssums, stargazer lilies, and zinnia;

Michelle, when she’s snoring and drooling on my shoulder,

her body glowing under blankets

as if plutonium was in her skin

© Copyright, 2014,  Derold Sligh.
All Rights Reserved.