Two Poems

Theodore Worozbyt

Lost

The cardinal came to the dish and died. The weeping
willow through the window remained green.
Nothing has changed, nothing was lost.

I saw you from the outside, you were washing dishes
in your flannel pajamas. The light flashed
from your glasses, just a blink.

In the mirror where my beard assumes its gray shape
reasonably, I pass my finger along my lip
to wipe away the peppery foam.

The cardinal came, so like your weeping, and died
through the window where I remain green.
Nothing was changed, nothing is lost.


***


Grouse Drumming in a Sky

A golden glyph that bathes the hollows sometimes looks at me, but I am not
Looking now. I can see your feather in the dead crowd
Of my thinking’s fingertips.

The warping cutting board, its strips of wooden colors, when held
Up flattens perfectly, and the towels here
When you have come home

Will smell like air because the cure for mildew is solar flares.
Why have seraphim so many wings?
Years bare chances, not chancels.

I like it that my own spirit turns out to be a clump of soil barely moist and dark
Enough to hold together when squeezed in the palm,
Or even just a rise of turpentine fumes

In the woods behind the house where I dunked my brush and smoked
And the spider big as my fucking hand saw me
At the top of the double dozen ladder.

When I spanned the yard today I stepped ahead of Echo into the woods,
Stepping across the three conglomerated pavers into the woods,
And at the top of the hill

I looked down at the mica rock topping the little pillar, at the nexus of its x
That marks the powerline with a number. The sun spread across
The long yellow grass ahead.

When the grouse broke from the blackberry patch I said Thomas
We might never see that again. What was it, he said.
All I know is the wind won’t blow,

He sang. We call out across the field for Scylla to return, pulling the wheels
Of her modest chariot. She cannot come, she will not blind
Us again with topaz eyes.

Theodore Worozbyt’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, The Iowa Review, New England Review, Po&sie, Poetry, Sentence, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly Online and Quarterly West. He has published two books of poetry, The Dauber Wings (Dream Horse Press, 2006) and Letters of Transit, which won the 2007 Juniper Prize (The University of Massachusetts Press, 2008). He is an Assistant Professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College.

Return