Driving Home from the Phil

Driving Home from the Phil 

Prokofiev has turned another song tonight

and communication lines run high along the road

carrying the voice in Ohms.  Over tarred poles,

the hanging line on crossbeams

like where Jesus’ arms would be. 

We count the churches too.  But mostly watch the 

oiled trunks.  Through compression

run the endless voices in the wire,

darting by each steeple’s likeness.

I don’t imagine you are thinking that exactly

as the Classical music station saturates our new Bug.

How the flutes seem to call and beckon 

through the Field Effect Transistors. 

But an early recording of Bartok

is playing.  Up ahead a few blocks we can see

the colored hope of strip malls, stranded amid

every denomination.  You are circling your lips. 

I can smell the red pigment. Staring all angles into the

lit vanity mirror.  You say, “Pull into Hank’s Market.

I want to get some wine.” In your den, the Gallo jug goes,

and you feel warm. And Charles Ives is telling us about

star spangled something old Kentucky home.  You unclick

your compact: ensign of a girl.  Next morning, Aunt Jemima

on low heat in a pan and stirring eggs in batter.  You’re so cute,

I mean with your hair all bed-thrown but you feel compelled to cook.

                                                             Robin Reda

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Of Water

Of Water

my emotions in 20 moons

Morrow Bay is rising in the night.

Lapping of the most delicate fish

whose only fate is skeleton.

Transparent as spirits, they lift in up-wells

just modestly visible near the surface.

The rocks are cool, water-sculpted

in the shape of angels and all.

Yet, here is where my love has led:

The long matches for the hearth,

the diner sign that crackles through the blind. 

A vagrancy in which poems return

to the whistling of air

just as smoke must show its blue

and natural flow

or drama must seep into photos

in the air-tight pages of medical logs.

Item:   20 moons to each emotion, paddle

            raising the scales

            of electric fish.

Dear Skeleton Vague As Angels:

            Let your fins be wings and let your

wings be over words.

 Oh, Motel That Makes The Truck-Stop Chatter:

            My love tonight was in using

the cover of an American Scholar to start my fire. 

Item:    Chimney needs swept.

Item:    Trucker’s gratuity greater than the

            cover price of journals.

Item:    Drowned fire –chimneysweep

            soaks drama into a photo of 20 moons.

                                            Robin Reda

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Before the Longest Cloud

Before the Longest Cloud

The clowns have gone psychotic, tying

themselves to the sides of elephants,

smoking. –except the one like Emmett Kelly. 

He shaves closely before daubing on a day’s

growth. He sweeps in circles as the spotlight

illuminates old fears. This circus

is on the grass on the edge of Malibu.

The ocean’s curvature creates a rightful dusk. 

But men with 50 foot pant legs sway on metal

stilts– almost robots yet, goofy as an old cartoon. 

The tallest one bounces as if to see what’s on

the other side of the sea’s horizon. And

we, the regular people, have gathered in these

staggered bleachers as if we are about to receive

an answer.

                        Robin Reda

First published, CiderPress Review, Vol 6, 2005, Cider Press  

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