Benjamin Gorman's Shared Poems

Brown silt tongue in ditch
blabs of water now missing;
frogs do not believe.

The Twins exploded in fireworks tonight. Again.
Every year stealing the spotlight, those two.

I stood and watched. Why not?
Best show in town, if you know when to look.

Fire-lances across the blackness, some
leave lingering incandescence and smoke.

Never a dull moment with those two;
smug, sure, but they know how to party.

They made the first gun
in late 10th century China
(where else?)— a genuine boomstick.
Cannons and long-bore guns and rifles and pistols,
for a thousand bloody years thereafter
clever minds and hands tinkered away
refining and perfecting the dream
of handheld death.

None along this journey could know
(though many might have guessed)
that on a Saturday in December of 2012,
in rural western Pennsylvania,
Joseph Loughrey, quite by accident,
would fatally shoot his 7-year-old son Craig
with a carefully machined descendant
of the Chinese invention.

The news reported they were getting in his truck
when Joseph recapitulated history:
“As he was placing the handgun on the console
with his right hand while pulling the truck door shut
with his left hand, the handgun accidentally discharged.”
Craig was on his booster seat to meet the leaden missive.
“Mr. Loughrey told police that he had unloaded
the magazine at home, but didn’t realize
that a bullet remained in the chamber.”

In an instant, all the weight of history
resounded in Craig’s small chest;
it was a lesson he could not bear.
Joseph, surely unaware of it,
nevertheless will never forget.

Beside the dirt-and-gravel road
recent rains have cut a little stream
into the settling contour of a swelling rise.

Here the slowing rivulet, calming now
(water, too, fears to fall, grabs frantically for purchase)
relaxes its desperate grip on loads of sediments.

A growing tongue of brown silt
extends in gaping compliance:
a doctor’s Aaah of release.

I watch this mudbar lengthen with the days
observe its grainy leading edge
folded down to touch the streambed.

How tempted I am to touch it,
to feel its soft surface, rub its fines
between fingers and thumb!

But I resist, deny myself that human urge
to touch, that endless hunger
of the web of tactile sense;

there is a beauty that persists only undisturbed,
a truth that can’t survive
the ravenous carnal greed.

The eyes alone can drink, unfeeling,
and clever ears may catch
the tiny music of water.

Things move
old barn

anchovies?