Three Poems - Jason Irwin

Poem for Gerry or, the Poet Goes Walking in His Backyard 

The Jays & Wrens sing his legend.     

The furry creatures call him saint, moonstruck 

uncle. He Who Dresses like a Windy Day, 

while the gnomes cast eyes of caution 

whenever he moves through the tall grass, 

murmuring his strange benedictions,  

his elegies to ribwort & tree bark. 

Each night they watch as he recedes  

like the sun, behind the doors of his domicile. 

Each morning they gather like soporific pilgrims  

waiting for him to come forth. 

Early Morning in the Old Town 

                     for August Kleinzahler 

 The 5am west-bound CSX rattles the loose-fitting panes.   

The cries and giggles of three Puerto Rican girls   

walking to school echo between apartment buildings   

& Chestnut trees. On the corner of 6th & Main   

Mr. Nasca croons All of me, why not take all of me,   

as he sweeps the sidewalk in front of the convenience store   

he's owned since time began. The entire town -- derelict & crumbling,   

yawns beneath a smoke-gray sky, while the aroma  

a fresh-brewed coffee wakes me & I rub my eyes  

to find my mother, still in her nightgown, standing on the balcony,  

staring out into the distance, as a shard of sunlight  

                                                           rests on the swollen knuckles  

of her left hand like an injured bird.  

             I've become a stranger here, just another vaguely familiar forehead  

passing through, trying to recapture some lost part of himself –  

an expression, or feeling trapped between tibula & funny bone, breath 

on glass. Something I can call my own. 

Sometimes We Wake Transformed  

In the ancient courts, generations of Henrys  

proclaimed: “We are the center of the universe.”  

Yet the moon people have moved among us  

since Noah’s time. Experts in camouflage,  

their lunar citadels look like nothing more  

than sky. And the sun,  

                      the sun is just a love-starved girl,  

dancing among the clover and dandelion fields.  

                     Sometimes we wake transformed 

into driftwood washed ashore. We wait for hours,   

weeks even, for someone to rescue us – 

a college professor, or old poet like Robert Bly, 

someone to carry us home & polish us into walking sticks

or eccentric sculptures to stand alongside 

dusty tomes on Norse mythology & geometry, mint tins   

from St Gallen & Tangier.