By: Laurie Keim

Father On A Rock

Father stands on a rock
rod in his hand
unbeknown to him
tides are darker
and deeper than he can imagine.
He casts always to the left
of twilight and never beyond
the horizon for fear
logic might fail
the test of spiritual endurance.
Look the whales are returning, I say.
He turns aside and stuffs
his pipe; below darken water
he dreams of a nymph
a water-world away
and tries to entice her with votes and numbers
coals in his short pipe all a smoulder.
Look, I say, the mother whale beats
the ocean like a drum
music time for calves
after milk and wholesome air.

Mother prefers indoors
catching pauses in duty
like spiders spinning
in the corners
little creatures, spindly, tentative, unsure.
For all the fishing tales
she knows the moon is seldom wrong
and when her periods falter
farther than grief
her body knows how to manage her soul.
Look, I say, the whales want us to frolic.

Come here, she says, once under the stars
I swam with whales, holding
firm their dorsal fin
we dived, mother whale and I
short of breath I saw
pinnacles and pillars strung in phosphorene.
What was it? I asked.
Worlds inside worlds
are possible, she said,
unlike wills that
hold another’s will to the bottom.

The air is wet from pounding waves
streetlights adorned in halos
waist-deep you feel
the tide of middle-age
without a middle kingdom to sustain it.

Father and mother had fished
and caught each other
while I was well unborn
but now I sort of see
an ethics involving cross-currents
water-spouts and fish rain
answers answered before
questions know how
to compose themselves in front of facts.
Father at the weigh in
was not heavy of hand
but over and over
like a tune
like a train arriving
like a light approaching
true and on time and in character.
Mother was awake to my nonsense
had reason to be heavy of heart
but fell and fell
through the choirs
between the trees
like a rose petal
in a room locked up and without breeze.

Home Ground

With an inner spring from the burnt earth
tiny grasshoppers
like flecks of banded straw
opening rainbows in flight
then packed tightly away like a fan.

Scritch of summer to barefoot base
home ground, powered dust
between the toes.

At times, it’s unbearably hot
heat of boredom distilled
in broken waves
when, then our head raised
we glimpse to the fore
a camphorlaurel palisade
either side
of the stream’s hidden disclosure–
distance yet to close–before brittle
dust devils of the dead.

Somewhere between flood and drought
the creek resides
beneath deceptive banks
of nettle bloom and stinking rogers.

Sliding down
through steps of silt, stinging ankles,
an eye cast both ways
in the direction of deeper holes
of mirrored stillness
that kiss the leaning black-bean pods.

From afar, somebody walking, say
from the station to the store
it sounded like kids playing

they had no idea, how secrecy
fosters freedom, sugar-drops
tickling the xylem

or why freckled leaf-rain
sprinkled over bare shoulders
blasts shotgun holes
through prohibitions.

In the life-well
where frogs of lost opportunity
croak and complain
to an otherwise
overburdened moon
images still trickle free
of unschooled hands
moving mossy boulders
trying to dam, doing their utmost
to deepen and darken and partly contain
the force and flow
of summer rains.

Why not, open the floodgates
at ten minutes to twelve
pull out the heart-stops
place your bare foot on the pedal
and allow the rich transport
to rattle the pipes in song
let it all slip away
unsorted, authentic and entirely embedded
for who knows where it goes
like time or a witch.

Even After Separation

Even after separation
fired up like a shooting star

consumed by the omen
of itself, divine
manic and delusional

I wanted to see them
together and watch how they might
touch each other afresh.

Jealous beyond jilted
assassin trained on himself
stealthily I take my place
underneath my former bedroom window

hear laughter
as they rise and dress
for dinner, preparing
to go out
and wanting again to be the mirror
instead of a hand
held in a naked flame.

After a pause of wind swept silence
old magnolia rubbing its flank
against the house
they burst in a wall of jubilance
from the front door
arms hooked around
each other’s waist

and caught on the wrong foot
I freeze in their eye line
held only together
by shadow glue and
my nihility of shadiness
figurine or idol
take your pick
with a busted head.

Passing within the margin
of their updraft, her fragrance
uncovered as a winter wood
bare as fact
they are lost
in their vital reengagement
to even recognize me
against the grey wall.

Festivity too free
to be described by me
and then they left.

I walked around the darken yard.
Touched the rope
hanging from the swing.
Felt the void
fill to the brim of stoniness
glazed by darkness and crowded
with vacancy.

Nothing left
to turn witness into wisdom.

I creep down the side
pass the flower boxes
back into the slipstream
of the carriageway.

Somewhere, behind me
padded footsteps, some place
up ahead, lines of early evening
converge. I plough the gloom
with heavy tread.

As if magnetized, pools of light
draw me on, static sparks
of knitted woollen sting
my lips. Above me, a giant
vacuum sucks my breath
and like falling dust I tingle
with erotic choice again.

###

Laurie Keim has had published three volumes of poetry Writing On Air (2015), Future Of Music (2020) and Between The Mirror And The Bed (2024). He is an awarding-winning poet and short fiction writer. In 2024, he had pieces shortlisted or published in the following: Bournemouth Writing Festival, The Sorrento Creative Writing Prize, Northern Beaches Writing Competition, Poetic Christi Press, Catchment: Poetry of Place and Short Stories Unlimited.