Dec 07 Featured Poet: John Chorazy

Psalm

I like witnessing the pulse of light
that comes and goes dependent on the flow
of widened clouds and the solemn dance of trees.
Watching light on walls appear and reappear
in throbs of brightness through a window-

the jut and sudden stab that swallows
open spaces, fades for moments before refilling
silent outlines laid across an empty room.
No wind inside, no sound at all.

I like to place myself within a wash of light
that falls through panes of tall clean windows.
Watching shadows pull their shape from hands
and arms and fingers, my entire form
stretched long and gathered like a puzzle
across the coolness of a floor

but still connected at the foot of me,
the place I press my body to the ground.
No sound inside. No wind at all.

*

My Father’s Garden

I learned all the things I know
about a garden from my father.
He would turn the soil in early spring
before the weeds came up, folded over
dirt and mulch into dark, moist piles
and sifted stones, carefully removing
that which had no place among the living.
Between the mounds of earth pulled into rows
he laid cut grass for walking paths
and at the end of May he plugged the ground
with plants and sent down seeds to die
their quiet deaths before the rain and warmth
called each one out, skinny infants groping
blindly toward summer light.

This morning I am walking through
my father’s garden- it is overrun by weeds
metastasized like plagues upon the fallow plot,
purslane spreading, yellow foxtail pointing up
rebellious heads in answer to neglect.
Sprays of witchgrass bend and gesture
silently, thin shadows thrown upon the dirt,
a sickly dance of slender ghosts motioning
to things beyond my view. I remember
my father’s hands, loam under his nails,
slipping out unwanted growth that hid among
the pepper and tomato plants, never troubled
but simply lifting, always pulling something,
his form forever hunched over the plant beds
yet never burdened by the garden’s daily labor,
the endless work that separates the thorn
and thistle from the fruitful vine.