There Are Reasons

Occasionally I get Fig Newtons.

Not too often because they take

me back to what is only a memory

of when the dead in my life were

alive, when I was a boy,

when Mrs. Heinz – who didn’t 

have two dimes to rub together –

would have a box when Dad

and Mom would make a call,

park the car on this side of the wooden

bridge that crossed the stream 

to get to her house and life.

I should relish such memories,

the near resurrection of memory,

the dead nearly alive.  I have 

to say the longing for the dead

to rise again fills me with deep

sorrow, that melancholy joy 

for what has been not to be again

and say sometimes when I take 

a bite in a voice barely audible to me,

“This is the day the Lord has made.

Rejoice.”  And can barely swallow.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

As One

The rain is eighteen inches or so on the porch

edge.  By my calculus of rainfall, a light one

last night.  Is there never a calculus in our

attempt to understand what we see and feel

and think?  Dreams, off-hand prophecies, 

the Freudian slips of life.  We collect and sift

the collected and discarded elements of our lives

in hope to see a pattern, a proof of life lived.

We are all artist trying to make the pieces fit

or better yet see where they have fitted in 

but not without a sense of wonder 

of how now came to be now 

by what we’ve done, what was done and 

how the two now seem as one.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Baiting

I throw a slightly baited hook

into memory wanting something

to appear but not too big almost

certain I’d prefer such a memory

to get away and refuse me the chance 

to bring it in.  There are things in the past

too big for a morning like this to hold

so I have used a small piece of bait

of remembering to lure a moment 

or two to me: a remembered song,

a whiff of perfume, a woman passing

casting a memory.  Some moment that doesn’t

hold gain and loss, a blues riff of the heart,

love held and lost. . . .  I’m beginning to

think I don’t have any other moments

that gave what these did.  Reel my line in,

know I don’t need to bait the past at all:

what will come will come.

Once again remember it’s better to receive 

than to ask for what I don’t need.

I think I’ll just float on this stream.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com