Odd

 

CHARLES P. RIES

 

Acknowledgments

 

As always, grateful appreciation and acknowledgment is given to Joan Raveling for her constant encouragement, willingness to edit and therapeutic interventions. I would also like to express my continuing debt of gratitude to Albert Huffstickler who died February 25, 2002 but whose writing I will never tire of. And to that curmudgeon Ray Foreman for posting all these poems in his Diner and for the comments, support and suggestions from those who hang out there every weekend. And finally, to the following electronic and print anthologies where most of these poems first appeared: CLARK STREET REVIEW, Bethoud, CO; FREE VERSE, Marshfield, WI; ANTHOLOGY, Mesa, AZ;  CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY, Irvine, CA; 2RIVER VIEW, De Soto, MO; STAPLEGUN PRESS, Birmingham, AL; ROCKFORD REVIEW, Rockford, IL; POETRY REPAIR SHOP, Jackson, MI; IODINE POETRY JOURNAL, Charlotte, NC; LIQUID MUSE QUARTERLY, Miami, FL; LATINO STUFF REVIEW, Miami, FL; MUSESKISS, Lenoir, NC; ZEN BABY, Santa Cruz, CA; CIRCLE MAGAZINE, Wernersville, PA; WORD RIOT, Lubbock, TX; WFOP MUSELETTER, Madison, WI; PHILADELPHIA POETS, Philadelphia, PA; PIDJIN, Long Island, NY; WISCONSIN REVIEW, Oshkosh, WI; HALFDRUNK MUSE, Athens, OH; PITCHFORK, Austin, TX; REMARK, Salt Lake City, UT, CA; ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE, San Jose, CA; HAZMAT REVIEW, Rochester, NY; SAINT VITUS’S DANCE, Albuquerque, NM; TAMAFYHR MOUNTAIN PRESS, EdenValley, WA and INK POT, Fallbrook, CA.

 

 

DEDICATION
ST. JOAN OF FARGO

 

 

© 2004 Charles P. Ries
Published August 2004 

“GOD BLESS THE SMALL PRESS”

 

POETS NOVA

Our thoughts are like dancers, two

inter-mingled, co-existing electrons

spinning around the same nucleus.

Our hearts, the pulsars at the center of

this rich, red, universe. Roses clinched

between orbiting lips that circle a black

planet obscured by an eclipsing moon.

I wonder if wishing sets thoughts in motion,

causing invisible ripples in the unseen?

Ripples that carry our secrets to God?

 

I consider all these things from my bar stool,

the poet’s throne. A magical chair with roots

that grows limbs and a mind of its own.

 

 

YOU NEVER LEFT

After you died, I kept you near.

I brought you with me to parties.

I placed you in the trunk of my car,

close to my CD changer and the

music we loved - together.

 

I felt cheated to be left with only

memories of you. You filled so much

space. A nature so luminous it lit the

dark river path we walked along that

autumn before you left me  - alone.

 

So I’ll keep you and set you on the

table during poker night, or next to my

pillow as I sleep, or amidst the floral

arrangement at the museum ball.

 

“You look lovely in brass and silver

tonight. Is your lid screwed on tight?

Would you mind if I shake you baby,

pop your top and sprinkle you on my

Caesar salad?”

 

“Just look at them looking. They’re all green

with envy. I’m with the prize. One whose

beauty they all wish they could posses.”

                                                           

I think I will keep you with me forever.

 

 

STARS SUSPENDED FROM BRANCHES

My grandfather often told us that on the day of his birth they put him

in the corner to die when he, the weaker of two scrawny twins,

came into the world. “But I didn’t die. Here I am,” he laughed.

His brother died a few days later. Funny how death works.

 

Shortly after my father died, my mother announced that she would soon

be passing, and eleven months later with a slight smile on her lips, she

released her final worry and said good-bye. Death was not in the room.

My mother didn’t believe in death.

 

At middle age I stand tonight on the field where we played 10,000 soft ball

games as children. Where I called my brother the longest litany of swear

words my ten year old mouth could spit out. I am standing here looking at

the sky trying to remember something.

 

Maybe stars are the souls of the glimmering dead, or perhaps meteors are

the tear drops of souls soon to be returned. Souls like me who dread their

plunge back into life’s unpredictable sea.

 

But tonight I mainly think of my grandfather Peter. Who at 94 could laugh

about the day he chased death from his door. He didn’t believe in death.

He died sweetly with a smile on his lips just as my mother did.

 

As a small boy, I sit under the Elm tree that spreads protecting arms over

my grandparents’cream city brick home. I watch my grandmother as

she cleans her attic. Hurling, tossing the accumulated treasures

of a life time out the garret window high above me. Beneath her,

and before me, rise a pile of memories, treasure and heartache.

 

“I’m cleaning up. Clearing out. Getting ready to leave,” she says, in that

succinct way she spoke about everything important. “For what?” I wondered,

until eight months later she died.

 

Someday it will be my turn to die, and when it is, I will laugh, clean my attic,

and cast away my last worry. I will await release into an ocean of night where

stars hang suspended from the branches of a massive Elm tree and souls

who’ve returned home swing for eternity, shedding tears for the living.