The Wait

When hunting, I think about the nature

of waiting, how much of my life
is taken by it. How here in the woods
to wait is to hunt and even moving
holds a cautious movement as the ground
holds fallen leaf covered trees, grapevines,
branches, rocks.  Every step a careful waltz
putting me nowhere but where I am.
How if deer appear or not, the sensation
of being where I am is a sacrament.
It enters the blood, that sense of the wild

where now is an eternity and a dance.  Now 

split like a piece of wood revealing the nature
of the grain, which way it goes, how to go with it. 

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoetry.com

The Return

The mists rose from patches of pines

like prayer incense rising, disappearing    

as words thinned and the burden

of the prayers dissolved until there 

was only the scent of pine and the air

was cleared for response.  It took all

day for the answers to appear.  Hours

of driving in the congestion of speed 

and slow downs, of cars and trucks 

and semis feet from front and back

bumpers and then that thinned some 

two hours from home as I drove west

into the grandeur of the sunset –

mauve clouds with gray underlings,

pink patches mixed with wisps 

of white, the sun slipping behind 

the clouds in that evening glow of gold

and felt the answers to the unspeakable

morning prayers and knew I’d soon be home.

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoetry.com!  

Marienstadt

Mary’s Town
That’s what they named it
German Catholics
Promised land that was fertile

Green

Farmland

A place as beautiful and welcoming as their homeland

Instead they found massive hemlocks and white pine

Dense

Dark

Uninhabitable

Unforgiving

But they stayed

Built a church

A brewery

And eventually discovered their future 

In carbon

The people of Marienstadt measured time by the church bells

And the factory whistle

They built tidy houses

And proclaimed that it was

A good life

The little boy was called to the fence that separated

His grandfather’s store

From the factory

Dollars for lunch for these men

He ran back to fetch them food

 

Years later he

Stood in that place 

on Christmas Eve

The store long gone

The factory, mostly empty

And watched the wind carry snow 

across the cracked pavement, 

Bend the tall grass 

that hid the abandoned railroad tracks

He remembered 

his grandmother’s rooms on the second floor

And his mother 

sitting on the porch, 

a beautiful bird perched on her shoulder

By Bekki Titchner