Brad’s Poetry
My Poems
Each month, I’ll post a selection of my poetry. Give it a read and let me know if anything sparks your interest.
Just a Feather
Alone, it couldn't fall with purpose,
even, but twirled and tarried on the air
to catch in ragweed and tickle your eye.
You're right, I said, little one, a bluebird
lost this feather far from a tree,
so it must have fallen out in flight
partway to somewhere it never got.
You handed it to me, turned to your dolls,
and I sat fanning the afternoon
with a ragged blue story wanting words,
twirling a thought that later I would put
in a book of verse to keep my page.
I asked aloud though you didn't listen
how one blue feather could do so little
while many together could swim the sky,
and asked that evening, after you'd gone,
if you would forgive me for falling away--
turn back, bend down, pick up and preserve--
or if like the bluebird you would fly on.
Thoughts flutter down, yet sometimes like
a feather in an itchy weed they cling,
waiting to catch us off-guard, to struggle
back in an instant--that frayed blue tip
that just this moment stopped me cold,
yet nearly nothing now, from the flat
top of a book on a shelf of books
the strengthless blue edge of something
that once was part of something now flown.
What Matters
If it matters, it takes up space,
she said, and she was right.
He knew a joy that filled
the circle of his arms and trickled
past his lips to patch
the hidden fissures left
by all the losses that
she made no longer matter.
Her face became the depth
between his eyes and all
his work. Her breath was in
his ears and in his lungs.
If it matters, it takes up space,
and now he knows the mass
of all loss at once,
the gravel churning in a chamber
of his heart, gnawing its walls
with every tug of his blood.
Impression: Sunset
I could not know
how young I was.
Across the lake, sunset
poured a narrow path
toward me, sparkles walking
the lake’s quick tips,
brief candles leading west.
I was thirty. Water
inched its heavy way.
I inched mine. Memories
linger, lessons ripening, waiting
for wisdom, somewhere west,
where paths all lead.
I have forgotten more
than many people live;
still, that sunset rides
my steps toward knowing.
Who was with me?
I don’t recall. Someone
else on a path.
