It is fall and ghosts walk
in the wind among fallen
leaves, mist, and fog more
easily than any other time
of the year -- the season
of visitation of the dead:
people, desires, dreams,
the what-if conclusions
never realized. In any given
moment, a ghost can brush
a heart as it passes by.
That which never dies walks
upon the earth September,
October, and November
Because men send their daughters away to marry great men
I never see Athena
But ancient Athens, galleries of sculpted busts
a looming view of the Parthenon
twenty-first-century glass and steel,
all architectural monuments that bow to corruption.
So does the entry canopy
a protruding trapezoid
itself lifted from the earth
a gem not pilfered.
The interior of the building left hollow
what's beneath this ground
the excavated remains on display
that lend truth to the myths.
The ancient goddess finds her way to the surface
face skyward to the open, airy heaven path
body trapped in a past, an unpredictable future.
Excavation proves centuries
fixed as modern-day life moves.
Greek relics connect
the once living stories
with the here and now.
This museum is an inversion; the question,
the inside of reason taken from the Acropolis
mounted by fluted stainless columns
the carved marble metope stories
a young woman taking the virgin procession
moving with her peers toward a staged performance
honoring deities at their feet
catching a glimpse into the foothold.
-Kellie Cole
Kellie Cole is a licensed architect practicing in West Virginia who teaches architecture at Fairmont State University. Kellie's poetry has been published in Whetstone, Fairmont State University's publication, Voices From the Attic, and River and Stone Anthology of Short Stories.
The wind among the trees,
the birds flying leaving
and taking their shadows,
here and now trying to keep
at bay there and then
and the mystery how the two
need each other. How I am
nothing without you, you
nothing without me,
how two make one,
the paradox of time
and eternity. Suspect
the prayer – “Not my will
but thine” – has nothing
to do with surrender but
is a battle cry right
before a victory.
The way two make one
and nothing’s lost.
-Byron Hoot
That trap__
Shouldn’t have
Checked it before heading
Off to church, but we did.
No groundhog but worse,
A skunk, hind leg clasped
Firmly, stared with beady eyes
As we approached garden’s edge
Standing there in our wool
Suits knowing it inhumane
To wait, Uncle Ralph said,
Sam, get the gun.
Meaning, of course,
An old Remington 22
By the fireplace_
The double barrel
Was fetched instead.
Uncle Ralph glanced at his watch,
Shrugged his shoulders,
Reluctantly accepted the shotgun,
Turned, aimed and fired,
We’ll take care of it when we get back
For one eternal hour
Seated in the pews
Of that small church
An uncomfortable congregation
Imagined the sulfurous
Stench of hell was upon them….
We feigned innocence,
Knowing it was really upon us.
-Wayne H. Swanger
midnight sweat
midnight vomit
crying and clutching the trash can
no school for me
mother’s blanket-wrapped sadness
predawn on the front porch
watching the school burn
four fire departments couldn’t stop the blaze
what could a woman in a blanket hope to do
that they couldn’t?
“good news,” she whispers
smoothing back my tangled hair
wiping the fever away with a cool cloth
“no school for anyone”
I am from plant-scented candles
From yarn made for crocheting and jars of stored food
I am from a mix of red bricks and tan parts etched into thick walls
With creaky halls moving on their own
I am from a quiet yet loud house echoing with sounds all too familiar
the old trees that don't go on for long
Whose long-gone limbs I remember
As if they were my own
I’m from modified passed-down recipes and dark-ish hair
From Meghan, Evan, Rachel, Melissa, and Gorman
I’m from overly cold rooms cold as a rainy autumn mornings
and messy closets brimming with random junk
And from skipping breakfasts
I’m from stories told years later and the “scribble monster”
and “beans beans The more you eat the more you toot” and patty cake
I’m from nothing specific
I’m from Charleston, West Virginia and Cincinnati
And skyline chili and sweet pepper-filled spaghetti
From my dad's first fight
ending with him crashing into a dumpster
with a bloody nose and a loud bang still going through his head
Magnets collected over the years some having family photos
and others with small pretty rocks attached
Stuck to the side of the fridge
By Iva Reynolds Sep 15, 2023
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
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
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
In the repertoire of life, repeat performances
are never given. Improvisation is the aesthetic,
variations on a theme. Beginnings
in the realm of moments forever ending.
“Once upon a time,” echoing throughout
eternity. Calls for, “Play it again” are heard
but never repeated. Even our memories
change over time, one thing changing another.
I could carry a sign – The Life and Times of Byron
Hoot – and know how true and false the story,
how impossible the task of words to catch
experience, how life improvises what I would
otherwise leave out.
-Byron Hoot
I am riding the wind, surveying the damage
of the storm as if I’m a bird caught on the wind
currents handed off like a baton in a relay race
whose finish line gets no closer. I see I am surveying
my life by wind and breeze, by close to the earth,
by above the trees in an instant of time and the perspective
changes. The damage and what’s left untouched immense.
The reasons for both unknown, the causality for each
equation unfinished on a blackboard.
This flight is hardly god-like though it suggests an
omnipresent point-of-view. I remind myself I am human
regardless of what I see, what I surmise has happened,
what dreams may still come to me. What I need are nights
of deep sleep; this riding the wind is not as easy
as it would seem to be. So often the spirit is broken
when things are clearly seen. So often it is made whole.
-Byron Hoot
visit hootnhowlpoetry.com.
