Ages, my ages ago, I lay awake,
feeling Mother’s starched sheets
between thumb and forefinger,
my incredibly distant big toe
imagined the monster beneath my five-year old’s bed.
I understood somewhere between brain and breastbone
the full push of the terrifying, infinite universe.
Later in chaste sheets, I slept tuned to cosmic AM.
Sounds I imagined coming from the hearts of
extinguished radio transmitters, light years away.
Those haunting, static waste-frequencies
I envisioned through the four-inch speaker
on hot Naperville nights
were as vivid to me as galaxies on fire!
Now I drowse four flights up while the Burlington and Northern
rumbles between me and the Missouri River.
Faint perfume of diesel and the scream
of distant wheels on steel break natural as water
beneath the darkening window.
Across the river a lightning flash
signals back from limestone cliffs.
Thousand one.
Thousand two.
Thousand three.
_______________
This is the sixth of seven poems from my portfolio for the 2020 Poetry Workshop I participated in, under the direction of instructor Eli Burrell.
| Copyright © 2021 by Bob Boldt |
i very much enjoyed this poem. The child to the adult--a great use of image to create a timeline. The ending three lines were fantastic.
ReplyDeleteYes, brilliant! And all the more powerful for its brevity.
ReplyDeleteSo evocative of my own youth, everyone slept with their windows open, I smelling through mine the the rank, iron-copper reek of the Indian River's seaweed rotting on the sandbars just 3 blocks east, upwind. The 3:40 AM SEC RR train grumbled its timely way south just 3 blocks the other way. Thunder meant rain, and rain meant a blessed break in the Florida heat. I counted those thousands, many many times. Thank you for another placid stroll down memory lane!
ReplyDelete