So this poem is a direct result of my wife making me clean up because we've got family coming in for the holiday.  I found this buried in a stack of papers that I'd pulled out of an old binder.  I'm pretty sure it's nearly 20 years old -- from around 1993-1994.  

Now, don't get me wrong.  The poem as originally written is HORRIBLE.  Extraneous words, bad placement, etc.  But it gave me the opportunity to edit and rewrite, which is something I need a lot of practice doing.

So here it is.

The Dark

(c) Drew Nicholson 2012

The dark makes everyone beautiful

soft focus the crags of age into the gently rolling hills of earlier years

clouds of eyelashes scud gently across your seafoam gaze

The dark makes everyone younger

brushing good full dirt into the cracks of accountability

encasing the resonant memories

The dark makes everyone quiet

enveloping sound with silence, deafening even those who do not hear

but listen, there! crickets hop across the meadow, I can tell

The dark makes everyone real

hands soft and gentle as I brush through the weight of tears

exposing everything masked by the light

The dark makes everyone open

the only place where you completely relax

no fear of the dark for you or I.

Fertile Ground

I wrote this about a year ago.  In between my first marriage and my second one, I had a torrid, passionate, flame-out affair that sometimes still stuns me with the level of ferocity and pain it enabled.


When I think about how we could have been
how we should have been
I realize instead how we would have been

Five years on
the pain has dulled
the confusion diminished

but every so often
something will remind me
of you or us

and the recriminations
and the what-ifs
and the whys

spill to the surface again
an underground spring
flooding a desert

until, thinking of how we could have been
how we should have been
leads to realizing how we would have been

And the desert drains
leaving behind fertile ground
for a new life
to be lived.

(c) 2012 Drew Nicholson

The Tall Grass

The tall grass makes the dog feel young.
She mostly sleeps,
In the sun when she can find it
And inconveniently in the bed,
And on the couch,
(These days ignorant of the post man and other suspicious interlopers).
Her stumpy legs twitch
And she whines a descant
Hunting dream demon squirrels
In canine valhalla,
Tonight they'll store their nuts in hell.

But come walk about time
She's off like a bullet
Blurring into the tall grass
Where she bounds
And runs
And stops so short any holding her leash
Would lose their balance, if kept they going
Against the Anchor of Sirius, nineteen pounds of pure halt.

And every so often
She'll forget that the sidewalk awaits
And bounds happily into view
Then stops
Short
And turns to look at me, as if to say
"Not in front of the children"
And primly walks to the door
That she pushes open herself, thank you
To return
To her gainful
Employment
With the Department Of Slumber.


(c) 2012 Drew Nicholson