Here, and: Here and There
Rent from DeepDyve- Here, and: Here and There
Here
Mountains on the horizon, yes,but right here driedweedstalks glisten,broken-open milkweed podsgive up the ghost,thistle sharpens the airand the whole world turns [End Page 135] the color of fencepostin late October sun.A wooden shed someonebuilt with carea hundred years agoleans into itself,holding nothing, no toolsto work the fieldsof prairie grass showingthrough its windows.Everything at last allowed to rest.Here you can smellthe evening rising, a thincool smell of earthand childhood, shallowwater over rocks.Huge cottonwood treesstand like stricken gods.It seems they could walkoff into the distanceif they wanted tobut somehow choose to stay.And now, after fifty-two yearsof running franticallyover this earth,mind like a whirlwind,eyes like famished animals,the broken roots of myfeet sink down. [End Page 136]
Here and There
I like the thought of you standing on 17thand Park Avenue thinking of me thinkingof you and how much I wantto kiss you in a treehouse I knowand now have access to that sitshigh in the Rocky Mountainsjust off Magnolia Road as it switchbacksabove Boulder Canyon not far fromwhere I live though whereyou are is itself a kind of canyonwith its stately rows of stone-faced falselysubstantial buildings plunging upfrom the open-door insane asylumUnion Square can sometimes seem to beto the nonstop gridlocked horn-honkingfestival MidtownManhattan really isno pine trees but sharp frazzled thoughtsbillions of them piercing the airas many as there are pine needlesin Roosevelt National Forestthough pine needles smell betterthey smell the way bright attentionwould smell if bright attentionhad a smell which it does it smellslike pine needles I wonder how manywomen have stood smilingat the intersection of 17th and Parkthinking of being kissed in a treehouseby a poet from Nebraska who usedto live in New York who stoodat that very intersection himself many timeslonging for something he couldn'tname none I bet it's a first [End Page 137] and how many firsts are there leftto be had we'll have to think of some othersso we don't fall into the deadly groovesother people's desires have wornfor us we'll have to find our ownwhich is why you shouldleave New York City leave itsspeed and noise and stray gunfire and cometo the treehouse just off Magnolia Roadwhere I will be waiting like the luckyanimal that I am held between the futureour thoughts are now creatingand the branchesof that tree.
John Brehm is the author of Sea of Faith, which won the Brittingham Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Southern Review, Boulevard, and many other journals. He works as a freelance writer in Boulder, Colorado.
