Anthem

Up at midnight, off at noon.
With the slow urgency of pilgrimage
trucks somehow find
ripe rows and pickers
in the roadless night fields.

Tired wives in old slippers
and faint flannel pack warm food
and steel thermoses of coffee into
cardboard boxes, and wait in
kitchens lit only by the neon 
ring above the sink
for the next shift of drivers.

Even on the Seventh Day,
no rest.
Only dark October rain
mars the harvest.  When fields
percolate and
combines flounder,
the bars in town fill up
like Easter churches,
their congregations 
​uneasy with leisure.

~Gail Mahr

They live in a car.  They
sleep in the back seat, on an old
blanket printed with Indian horses and arrowheads.
Their alarm clock is the night shift leaving
the Ford plant.
Mornings, she washes with water
from the radiator, cooks an egg
on the dull black metal of the hood,
and sets the dishes to soak in the trunk.
He reads last week's paper while
the news blazes on the radio.
"Hey, guess who died?" He calls out the window
to her.  But she is busy looking at
fabric samples; she would like to re-cover
​the seats someday.

The icebridge weds the riverbanks,
Windwaves frozen,
still, polished pewter desert,
Thawing begins, aborts,
renews, leaving  heal dent and leaf shadow.

Below, the water swifts obscured,
sliding along the ice-crust's belly,
music behind dark, thick glass.

When patches of open water appear
the ice first pretends not to notice its loss.
It lingers, grasps the shore,
opens its heart to rushing death.

~Gail Mahr

So, you think you're a poet.
A pencil follow you everywhere
like an unwanted foundling dog.
Bits of paper from shredded 
poems spin to the floor
every time you stand.
You sit staring at the
river, bearing down, straining
to deliver a better word for "flow."
Metaphors elude you like
handsome strangers on
crowded foreign streets;
you wander to that place in
your mind that knows how to
parallel park, and remembers the green
glass cowboy boot you won at
the county fair, but find 
nothing useful.
A thin blanket of pain unfolds
above your eyebrows.
You sigh, put your
pencil down and wait.

~Gail Mahr

Tucked into a birth that fits only
a little looser than a shoe,
"Pitch" and "roll" suddenly have meaning.
The sealake inhales,
we thrust forward and yearn
against the anchors gravity,
While windwaves wag us side to side.
We stalk sleep
attended by ancient groaning wood,
an uneasy lullaby.

In morning's sparkle
We crawl blinking from below,
driving dreams away with cups of coffee,
And carve the water with with dinghy's oars
to island shore,
There sand underfoot
​Feels strangely too still.

Breezing

"Breezing" is the race horse's last turn
around the track
After the absolute effort of timed gallop
Before the long cooling walk.
Breezing, he sets his speed
tests his mood,
Head up, tail high, work behind him,
Oats waiting in the barn.

Today I am breezing,
judging the day with my nostrils,
Someone's baking bread,
Someone else burning oak.
But I have misunderstood the wind.
I turn for home and it slams me like
something left unlatched.
And I still have the hill.
But at the finish
My oats.

~Gail Mahr

An Oblivious Metamorphosis

When I was twelve,
I merged in the dark of the Tower Theater
with Shirley Maclaine.
Elfin rufous hair and celadon eyes, pale
perfect skin, thoroughbred legs,
were mine and hers.
We had the power to make men lust 
and cherish.
Home in the bathroom mirror,
round and mousey me.
Strangers thought I was my brother's brother.

Twenty-five years later
looking in the mirror again,
Eyes the color of winter grass stared back,
Hair sliced with gold slides across the face,
Not Shirley's face.
But
The one I deserve.

~Gail Mahr

A dear friend of mine is a gifted writer.  I find her work to be both magical and intuitive.  Graciously she has agree to allow me to share some of her work on my blog.  Consequently during the next few weeks, from time to time, you will see something written by Gail Mahr.  With that introduction I now share with you:

 "Lost Waitress Poem":

Over the Years,
Michael fell in love with this blond waitress.
He could imagine her
in one of his old shirts reading the newspaper
next to him in bed,
even as she said:  "Coffee, sir?"

One day, only dusty plants
waited in the window where the restaurant
used to be.
Michael new he lost her.
He ate every lunch out,
dinner, sometimes, too plunging ardent-eyed
into uncharted Pizza Heavens and Mac and Don's,
blurting not:  "Can I look at the menu?"
but:  "Let me see your waitresses!"

In Michael's town
there are many restaurants.
Because he hated Chinese food,
He never found her

~Gail Mahr


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