Of Rose Gardens and Rilke

Every petal has dropped from the rose.
The thorns even, those rusty spears
That tore into Rainer’s life blood
Have been scraped away. Nothing remains
Now except the green veins of stem,
The last bit that still touches the dirt.
Below, smaller veins reach out for something,
Some twitch of regenerative strength
From which to pull survival. A red snake slides in
And crafts an empty hole beneath.
The sun sags and dims something terrible
Over the garden. Evening dust.
Rain water is always too late. In the dead of night
The rosebush jumps at its own ghost.

Ocean Hymn

For Anya Krugovoy Silver

When I think of my end, when I wonder
How I’ll expire, I hope that it’s by water.
I hope that in the night I’ll go quietly under,
Remaining in the sea until awakened by the Potter,

The Crafter of this bitter earth turned cold.
This faded beast on whose back we sleep,
This empty face whose stories are told
In the shallow scars we fight to keep.

It’s to the moving sea that I’ll return.
Not to the still and silent dirt, to the hard stones,
To the sprawling forests that fall and burn,
Or the crypts and vaults that trap our bones.

It’s in the stirring ocean that I’ll find my slumber,
And give up a life I may never remember.

Night in October

After Weldon Kees

With a hollowed core filled brimming with light
on this hallowed night in October, now
making halos of us all. Feeling the warmth
etching faces into the cold breeze of sunfall,
the costumed procession chanting cheers
and songs of hauntings, disappearances,
spirit possession, and candy apples,
moves down the blood orange sidewalk.

The grass shivers and grays
as the days end comes and dapples
the lawn with shadow. Memories will survive
as ghosts into the next spring and summer.
Even as a night in July will recall
their birth; a bridge, a wandering spirit, and a fall.

Pictures

It pours in gold over the diamond ice stones in the crystal glass.
The slash of fire into the cold night,
And the smell of real wood, deforested loss over years
And years of burning.
Drawing in,
The nose looks even more inward than the eyes.
Chin on the oak tabletop,
Just staring in with every sense.
Why, really,
     Are we still fighting sober
When there’s already a time where we’re only pictures?
A time when snow covers the forehead,
Blue and turning more blue. There’s no end
To the empty loss of time when that occurs
And what the glass offers is reprieve, real rest.
Why then does the hand shake and shatter
While the glass lets itself in through the front door?
     You can ask yourself why the rain falls
Or why the sun goes pink in the winter afternoon.
Why keeping lists never carries on into the next life.
Why dreams go unremembered after the gray sleep.
Why pictures fade faster when they’re hanging on the wall.
The answer’s in the last glass that you cling to, hold, and keep.

Berryman’s Winter

Sat at his desk, early in the morning,
The light hasn’t even come through the curtains.
The bottle has its cap removed.
“I’ve beat you by hours,” The bottle says,
Looking at the sun,
“No matter your cloudless light,
I reign here.”
He leans forward, and works a little more.
His composition runs from form to form,
Looking for something under the page
Or in the ink of the fountain pen
That lets flourishing strokes fall asleep
As the sun finally catches up with the wine.
There’s a lyric there, and the new perspective
Tells a story that differs in tone and colour
From the one that he heard before. He screams.
Minnesota carries this winter well.
It’s cold to the point of ice on his beard,
Words on the grey waves of sadness.
Here’s the sound, looking for the notes that spoke
Before time had worn him down and away.
Minnesota carries this winter well.
He’s alive today. Up, and looking at the drawn
Shadows relinquishing their hold
On the morning walls, a welcome to the dawn
That looks at last to melt the snow.
Minnesota carries this winter well.

Aaron Lantz is a poet from the American Midwest, now living in London, England. His writing has previously appeared in Pacifism21. 100 Thousand Poets for Change, and here in Peacock Journal..