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 "Jack Frost's Magic" (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC) Poetry
A poem waltzes the interrupted line dividing the freeway. flayed dancer to mum music, Cars swoop past on one side of the road, Hulking ghostly relics of past lives on the other. ~Gail Mahr
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 "December Memories" (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC) December, Acting Like March
Around piles of gutted grain three-fingered duck tracks knit lace of the flimsy snow. On the hill sled skids magnify the lace into giant curtains. Clots of leaves, rake's refugees wait in frozen sugar at the mouths of streets. The sky wears only a sweater of gray Not the stout wool layers of January. Shovel's rasp on concrete, a sound of storm is missing today. We could almost lose our minds with Spring yet Like butter on Sunday morning toast this snow will relax into the warm earth Before winter scowls. ~Gail Mahr  "After the Harvest" (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC) 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  "Bleak Days" (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC) 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.  "March Thaw" (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC) 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  "Vague Days" (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLc) 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  "Once Upon a Fall Afternoon" (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC) 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  (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC) 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  (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC)  "September Day" (Image Courtesy of Wylddane Productions, LLC) 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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