Poetry

It thrashes in the oaks and soughs in the elms.
Catches on innocence and soon dismantles that.
Sends children bewildered into life. Childhood

It’s a sunny weekday in May
and I have had a bowl of beef stew
and a cold bottle of beer on the brick patio

  For all the years he worked as a pattern cutter
in the denim sweatshops of Los Angeles,
  my father never spoke of what it was he did.

It is night. I feel it is night
not because darkness has fallen
(what do I care about darkness falling)
but because down in myself the shouting
has stopped, has given up.

I just left them there holding their breath,
summer dripping from their honeyed
muzzles.