Coat of Birds
He wore a coat of birds
and played the violin
but only mornings
and even then only on spring mornings.
When the train would blow
from five or six miles away
it made a moving note that he followed
like religion.
He may have wanted
harmony
but thought better of it.
One day
his coat flew off
taking him along
like
a flag
in the wind of one mind
with hollow bones
in an act of improv
and he wrote a song in the process.
It sounded like one
our children
even now
still
sing.
A Small Place
I.
Left for home through open country
where nobody ever lived. The dark
houses, their lights misremembered
on old roads without gravel, barely trail,
more a bushwhack—there’s no feed
to cut.
II.
Gone for home through empty bottles
little towns too with no gods but waters
way beyond their banks.
From the levy tonight I stand looking
out over the flow to those torches
of the dead-and-gone
who wait, disperse, surround,
frenzy then huddle
on the far side
with only hindsight—they know
nothing is corporal now.
Whereas this side
with its broken glass voice scattering
tire-hardened technicolor touch
ignores, escapes.
III.
Home through mornings tinged
quiet with red clay like iron.
Sometimes it can
overwhelm the moment. But I have
learned that between flesh and blood
is a small place.
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in Rattle, The Reader, The Istanbul Review, The Worcester Review, The Honest Ulsterman, hundreds of others, and is the author of three full collections and eleven chapbooks of poetry, including Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), The Rainflock Sings Again (Unsolicited Press, 2019), Floodlit (Beakful, 2019), and the forthcoming The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021).
The Literary Forest Poetry Magazine 