In the Early Hours, 664S It was left to the fog to guide him in, the field to shield him in its frozen arms. The seatbelt dangled, and he was alone, a world away from the lighted farms. The friends he’d always known and one last beer advised him as to what was wise to try. But they were too far off to help him steer, and they’d have years to wrestle with the why. Air left it to the pole to break his fall. Slow motion spared him all the hours it had. His sometime friend, the world, sped off toward town. His own voice, younger, called out for his dad. And all the things he meant to do in time went over the field on the owl’s wings and couldn’t get home by any paths they knew, which sometimes is the way of things. A startled field mouse notarized the will with trembling broken leaves could understand. The morning light still hours behind the hill, God stroked his silky hair with His rough hand. Star Guides On inheriting three worn copies of a Golden Nature Guide to the stars Three guides to chart each rise, each fall, come down to me from different ones, but all with this penchant for looking up--who never thought the stars would stop. Who took what life would let them have, then searched for more, or else, above--hoping they might recover there some part of all they’d lost down here. Who peered at the moon as if to say to some self long light years away, Hush now. As if their looking might except the loss, or stroke the sadness from a far-off face. One watcher from each decade’s lawn, who couldn’t leave the stars alone--and yet, they did somehow, and one by one, growing tired, they headed in. Who’d trailed the North Star everywhere, only to watch it disappear. Who, lost in looking, finally found the reach of heaven to the ground. The way a child wandering through the house, an upturned mirror at his waist, looks down to walk the ceiling, or cross a transom--and finds another world, but cannot stay, it is so lonesome, guides can trip on only air, and fall against what isn’t there. Mistaking sky for six feet down, they can forget the way they came. And they will lose you in the world--who find their dying still so hard. Who wish their comfort for your crying, on a star. By a light no longer there. And yet still here.
Annie Stapleton lives and writes in the Hocking Hills of southeastern Ohio, where her Cowboy Corgi Wrigley (half Blue Heeler) herds her around all day. She also edits for others and has a particular heart for lovely poetry manuscripts in just the slightest bit of disarray. Her work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Alaska Quarterly Review, Best American Fantasy, Plains Poetry Journal, The Reader, The Weekly Standard, and Spirituality+Health, among others. annlstapleton.com
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 