something about the poems.....

Somewhere on Indiana 63

“To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.”
-Russian Proverb

The low gray slates of sky
are pulled down tight,
fitting snugly around the crown
of muddy black fields
like a felt cap soaked with rain.
It is neither dark nor light,
cold nor hot; where the former
is simply the absence of the latter.
The dull illumination of history
is only part of this poem –
the nightmares are my own –
And every nightmare has its own logic.
A logic where memory is the nemesis
of wonder, and wonder demands
residence nowhere but in the present,
shattering into the tailings
of the icy wakes of comets.

©2007 Barney F. McClelland

Northside Sonata


I. Lines Written in Late Winter

So late is it, only demons can slip
Through bricks of houses held in winter's throes.
No promise in the air to break its grip;
No night insects, no dawn harbinger crows.
Rationally, I love our bleakest season,
Love it for itself, and because it's still.
Chastened by the northern stuff of reason;
Books are read, my verses written, until -
Viewing my garden wrapped in hoary down,
Realizing only then, Spring's sedition.
Jonquils and phlox conspiring, give the sound
For bees to buzz - birds sing without contrition.
-But now, I'll retire to my wintry keep,
-With no woman to share my bed - I'll sleep.


II. Lines Written on the First Day of Spring

Winter’s penumbra shrinks in newborn sun
Retreating to a darker, colder soil
Beyond the reach of bulbs and rhizomes’ run
Where I have begun the ritual toil
Of shedding another season passed,
Planting the seed of what has yet to come;
The ferns’ fronds unfurl in green and silver cast
While golden garden spiders webs are spun.
Outside the palisade of pyracanthus
A carload of drunken teenagers howl,
Roaring up and down Apple Street, mindless
In their reveling of my jealous scowl –
-Their flaunting youth, their brashness and excess,
-Most of all, their flailing against hopelessness.


III. Lines Written in Midsummer

My neighbors, who on this heat-blasted day,
Feel it incumbent to dither noisily
In their yards, braying loudly across the way.
Their mowers unleashed, chew on fescue and bay.
Hammering things, though I can’t imagine what,
Their errant, shrieking children run amok –
A summer’s work my spade’s labor’s wrought,
Raucous miscreants trample without a thought.
Even early dawn offers no respite
Against their frenzied, heathen stirring storm.
Will peace descend upon the fall of night?
Not likely, the petrol-scented charcoal warns.
-Not even the cicada’s buzz can relieve
-For it is barbeque and beer this eve.


IV. Lines Written on All Hallows’ Eve

Creeping murmurs and the poring darkness,
Strange is it, the voice that comes like a roar
Through membranes of an older consciousness,
Stating its name, rapping at my front door.
In the church steeple’s shadow, the old gods,
Now relegated to the lower case,
Linger yet beneath the Christian façade.
The veneer wears thin, Samhain shows its face,
Albeit, half-sized wearing a K-Mart mask –
Yet, make no mistake, heathen hearts still drum
Beneath polyester costumes - dare I ask;
Is it now something wicked this way comes?
-As they leave, a solitary dog barks
-Retreating, I sit in silence with the dark.

©2007 Barney F. McClelland

Rebuilt Title

Before we bought “pre-owned” parts
or salvaged, or recycled,
we went to junkyards.
With their boiled out radiators,
glistening like tar,
lined up in neat little rows
like a military graveyard.
The dried bones and relics
of Chevys, Fords, and Olds
all laid out on shelves,
in an auto parts catacomb.
Its caretakers attired
in industrial laundry uniforms
anointed with grease by noon,
with their oily pompadours,
sideburns and ink pen tattoos
and talons highly skilled
in the scavengers’ art
would turn and wheel
crushing the butts of Chesterfields
beneath their heels
while plucking out the beating heart
from the metal carrion
of Buicks and Dodge Darts.

Now I rummage through
foxed and forgotten quarterlies,
and musty, dog-eared anthologies
scouring for a “like-new” metaphor,
straight and neat as the day
she left the showroom floor –
(a little bondo, a little primer
and she’ll be good to go,)
or an AM/FM tape deck that plays
“The Fiddler of Dooney” and
“Requiem” on the radio.
Maybe a clever enjambment
that’s not too badly bent
Or an old familiar simile
that still might have some tread.
I look up at the soldered sky,
and not without some dread,
and pray Thanksgiving break
will be warm and clear this year.
For soon it will be far too cold
to weld this rusty rhyme scheme
on this old doghouse villanelle.
Or maybe I can arrange the use
of my neighbor’s heated garage –
which shouldn’t be too dear –
no more than a case of beer.
And with luck, I’ll have this baby
on the road by Christmas,
or, at the latest, by New Year’s.

© 2007 Barney F. McClelland