Patrick Carrington

I used to climb my father, hands
in the calloused bark of his
as I walked up his chest
and stood on his shoulders. When
I grew he took me to a white oak
he'd planted in the woods. I
climbed that too. All the way
to the crown. It was solid like him.

And sometimes
in summer storms
and sometimes
in branches bent by snow
I'd imagine I could feel him
touch me and hear him call me,
as if he'd evolved into that tree
to lay hands on my shoulders
and say one last thing.
But more often love
was a matter of silence.

The dead come back. Do they
ever leave at all? Maybe
it's a trick, slipping into dirt
like a root. No matter if
he's resting now or hiding,
it was easy to forget
the tree. Shameful
it took me so long to know
it deserved better,
that in a truer world
it would not have blurred
into the others
as if it were just the same. I

lost it long ago to the ax
of my neglect, like the pictures
of a man I passed from frame
to scrapbook to shoebox
and locked in a closet

like a skeleton. I return
to these woods with no tongue
and barefoot. To walk quietly,
listening for his risen bones.

Sorting through fluttering debris
of thick boyhood days, tangle of jungle
browned with our absence,
I remember how you cupped
water at Cedar Creek,
your hands a chalice. And flowers

you planted near the bank
to make it your church,
somewhere to sit in the greening
comfort of a private prayer.
A place one might see God
and not be surprised.

Even the brown stubble after combine's shave
has greened from a four-day rain turned snowstorm
Mud on dirt roads has dried
to a maze of twelve-inch-high ruts
That I jockey with the ranch's Jack Russell Terrier
in my raw silk jacket too cold for air currents
from snow-clad Bear's Paw Mountains
Though the white lace on grassland
melted with the sun's first heat

In place of the wet handiwork
gum weed and goldenrod have stitched
saffron flowers over the country's canvas
Their spice brings nine mule deer for breakfast
But Jack chases them until white oval asses
clear the fence on the far side of the field
Wild sunflowers that edge the road
say it's too early for winter
By clutching buttered petals to their bosoms
and refusing to ripen the seeds that huddle there

Grouse and pheasants worry their wings
back and forth over the withheld food
While meadowlarks sing in celebration
that he frost was just testing fall's tenacity
And Jack is first to sniff the smoke
rising from the town's communal leaf blaze
Which will soon blanket the sky with soot
that the locals will call fog

Patrick Carrington teaches creative writing in New Jersey and is the poetry editor for the art and literary journal Mannequin Envy www.mannequinenvy.com His poetry has appeared in The Connecticut Review, The Potomac Review, Rattle, The Evansville Review, The New York Quarterly, Sycamore Review, Tar River Poetry, The Georgetown Review and many other journals. Rise, Fall, and Acceptance (MSR Publishing, 2006), his first full collection, is available at Main St. Rag's online bookstore www.mainstreetrag.com

Carrington's new chapbook, Hard Blessings, is up for advanced sale and can be pre-ordered from the publisher’s website. Here’s the link to Main Street Rag, where it can be purchased at a 30% discount:

http://www.mainstreetrag.com/store/ComingSoon.php

The discount applies to online sales only, which must be done from their website, through PayPal. Scheduled release date is March 17.

Ellaraine Lockie was in Kenya last year on a poetry fellowship from Summer Literary Seminars, to Centrum in Port Townsend, WA, for a poetry residency. She received her eleventh Pushcart Prize nomination and won the 2007 Elizabeth R. Curry Prize from SLAB at the University of Slippery Rock. Forthcoming are a Rooftop Chaplet from Adrienne Lewis' series, and a poetry/art broadside from Brick Bat Review that will be introduced at the 2008 Book Fair in Los Angeles. Blue Ribbons at the County Fair was published by PWJ Press (Patricia Wellingham-Jones Publishing).