Jeff Hardin – Five Poems

Coming Into An Inheritance

Think of the poems about visiting recluses
in search of new wisdom, yet most still don’t
venture forth out of their own lost solitudes.

Someone has her errands and the memory
of a cottonwood beneath which someone
whispered a prayer that fluttered up into the leaves.

Moving slowly along the creek bank, I might
just come into an inheritance unknown by
those whose intimacies I treasure the most.

For a while I tried out gratitude. I wandered
in the back woods, remembering how often
I lie awake long into midnight’s falling away.

Now where am I? Some page near the middle?
To whoever is listening, if you’re reading aloud,
let’s live in these vowels softening our tongues.

A Fire We Might Touch

New growth on the tulip tree is currently seventeen
sprouts. Next week who can say? I wonder what
reachings toward my life
………………………………………some later season will bear.

Lucky for me, the grammar of rainfall makes perfect
sense. Sometimes, it’s two days of reading, other times
three.
…………..I move through the centuries in an afternoon.

Though I’m outshined by dew, I feel no disappointment.
There’s so little time to be the silence of barn lofts.
I’ll take what light I can find
…………………………………………..wherever it stalls the dark.

Messages keep coming, though I’m not to be trusted
—some of them are obvious, others opaque.
A yard full of twigs
……………………………..speaks the wealth of the stars.

Of one who speaks aloud such claims, I hear
the sneers, dismissals, rumblings, and gripes.
No clue toward the warmth
………………………………………….of the fires he might touch.

Sunlight Back Behind The Clouds

Just a few drops of rain, hardly enough
to wet the tongue; and that purple bird
goes skimming past again
…………………………………………in a shining all its own.

When the air’s damp and heavy like this,
and it seems the day
…………………………………on up into morning
still hasn’t begun, I lean toward holiness,

the little I grasp though I reach with both hands.
Sometimes I think
……………………………..that the next thought that comes
will sharpen the cloud edges, bristle the leaves.

I’ve been wrong before, though, and often enough
that I’ve come to accept my odious failings,
comforted by listening
……………………………………to the leaves letting loose.

Isn’t the sunlight back behind clouds a reminder
to wait? And am I not weightless with the smallest
of joys? Even my yes
………………………………..is lifting and fluttering away.

 Having Tired Of Recent Stories

Tumble on over, bag in the wind, out of my yard and beyond.
I just might follow. And squirrel who can’t stop dancing
on dry oak leaves,
…………………………….that’s my kind of music too.

Last night I felt like weeping for the many who died this week,
so I turned the coverage off and watched the ivy’s green.
Worthless grief—but what can I do?
…………………………………………………………I knew no names.

Hawks chase each other down the driveway, squalling,
veering through overhanging limbs. I’ve read all the poets,
and none have caught that sound
……………………………………………………..or swerved their lines as well.

We’re here together for a while because we’ve seen so much
no one person can grasp or bear it all. We shield each other
so the light won’t
……………………………..clutch us, fill us, turn us out into the dust.

After the giant wave, some loved ones—we know—will not
be seen again. “I still have hope,” a stunned survivor says.
So quickly then prayers begin to lift for her
…………………………………………………………………..  …and now this one…

An Answer Full Of Questions

My thoughts on the subject of self come and go.
The feel of the sun on my face fills my cells.
I find I’m a guest inside all that I know.

The question I pose is how to start a sentence
with an answer full of questions beautiful enough
to soothe any need I have for an answer.

Whatever it was I wanted for myself I’ve now
forgotten. The next thought is never the next thought
since grace leaps forward and rewrites the plot.

Outside the gates I hold these begging bowls,
poems above which people pause, looking in.
Sometimes their emptiness holds the width of the sky.

Ships set sail; planes find their runways; someone
stares down the length of the last day he lives.
Another whispers blessings out ahead,
……………………………………………………………..and joy.

Jeff Hardin is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Notes for a Praise Book, Small Revolution and Restoring the Narrative, recipient of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His poems appear in The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, North American Review, Measure, The Hudson Review, and elsewhere. More at jeffhardin.weebly.com.