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The poetry of Laurie Byro

( art by Ivan Waters )

 

 

The Good Thief

While you slept and stars ticked forward,
a hound begged in snow-melt for a lost
dream of rabbit,  I stole from you. 
 
I was the poet in blue shadows, an owl
circling for a soft nape of neck. I drove past
roadside stands filled with coffee-cans
 
of garden flowers.  How their colors rubbed
against one another, luring me to stop. In moonlight,
I took two brown eggs speckled with dirt. 
 
I watched your eyelids flutter and went through
the pockets of your trousers. I found two
ticket stubs, a linty cough drop, silver coins,
 
a few of copper.  I crept the hallway, slouched
past too-loud clocks. I hid, slid open
a drawer in your kitchen, found a knife.  I ate
 
a tomato over your sink, juice running
off my chin like a greedy god.  I coveted
the hand made quilt, thumbed the book

of poems left as you’d read them
on the couch. I crouched thick as shadow
through your skylight. Against a backdrop

of breathing, I strained to hear a shriek
off a bough that held a beetle trapped
in resin. I knew when I walked

home, I’d be followed by smug gold eyes.
Before it was time for me to leave,
I fingered all the buttons on your coat.

Summer Garden 
                       
           after Anna Akhmatova
    
     I want to see the roses
     in the park
     of my childhood
     where I played as young
     as the newly formed statues there.

     Rain drops
     tiptoe in puddles
     that grow as we splash.
     We wade through pools
     of uncertain dreams.
     We swim in lonely desire.
    
     I see their chiseled bodies
     with unblinking eyes
     regard me
     a pink, imperfect bud.
    
     I imagine them now
     moss laurelled halos
     mother-of-pearl and shell,
     and I wonder if they still
     tend the roses,
     whether they are too old now,
     whether I am too old.

     And what of their loneliness?
     And what of mine?

 

Stars Falling

The day before, I forage
in the woods to make a wreath.
The time of year to gather and pray.

I am putting my life into a circle.
I twist wire and cut boughs, baby’s
breath and pink ribbons—I put away
my old grief, my tired complaints.

I have put you there too, old loves—
acorns for your eyes, blue jay feathers
for your hair—I am putting my best
black Spanish hat there, my fastest
bicycle from a favorite Christmas.
I am putting my worn shoes there--
cobblestones from Prague alleys,
street lamps from Paris. I am pouring
a glass of autumn cider and cutting up
shrimp toast to add to the wreath. I am
picking daffodils and catching lake turtles—
the sun in my face.  I am putting it all
there, around the edges.

When stars fall—
I catch one, I run out of wishes before stars—
but the one that falls into my hands,
like the baseball that never did in school,
I put that on the wreath, too.

It shines brightest, lets me work
through the night, illuminates your faces
while each of you sleep and I sing
your names into the fragrant morning.

Samhain Eve

Snow-white birches bend low to the ground,
begging to be stripped of yellow leaves.  In my head,
I am reading a poem to Geordie.  You spread

your black pea-coat on damp earth, invite me
near the bonfire you have made.  You cup
your hands as if around a match, enter me as easily

as breathing in—releasing oxygen, dispelling
strength.  Smoke snakes around our ankles. A sooty
leaf rises, a black-ghost smudges a cross on

my forehead.  I carry my shoes across a stream,
stepping barefoot on stones warmed by the sun.
Hemlock boughs are flattened soft from rain.

In England, a woman washes nappies, rinses
out piss while composing a poem in her head. There
are scars where electricity scorched her temples.

If you call me by her name, I won’t answer. I’ll trudge
through fiery leaves that late autumn trees have shed.
I say it looks as if someone has been bleeding.

You say it’s the time of year to be lonely. We forage
branches of gold on our way home. We place them in clay
jars to lure love to a table glittering with beads of honey.

Bill’s Constellations

For Billy Collins

Whatever actually happened at Yang-Ping’s house
during that winter, there were seasons before and after

in which nothing happened. Rowboat’s skiffled along
rain-washed river bottoms, rocky but not impassable.

There wasn’t always a drunken moon or salty stars
in a black bowl of sky. A swan followed the boat

seeking clues about the lady in the wide-brimmed hat,
blue ribbon trailing the wind like her mate’s feathers.

The tail of Scorpio slashed the wild sky.  The woman
blinded by icy stars, could have been mistaken for a wizened

Chinaman, a thousand years old. The silent river spilled
no secrets about temptation or regret. The woman navigating

these waters held a compass that could turn her boat around,
change to any direction. She planted her stilted legs solidly

on its wooden floor, the book open and face down
beside her written by a man who’d traveled similar waters.

Many winters before, too many to record in a painted chart,
a Chinaman paddled a river, his long oars dripping stars.

The Blind Fisherman of Gibeon

Before I had language,
when the earth held me
in her clutches I was a row
of jonquils entertaining bees

all buzzing around my eyes,
their empty sockets, the roar of lightning,
when the hairs on my wrists rose.

It was easy to speak in visions.
The burst of little suns
in my final moments.
I became as dark as the soil
where I buried bulbs.

Now I am left with fingers to feel
for petals that echo of color.
My wife has a face made perfect
by fingertips and longing.

I live beneath the planks
where light filters through.
I hold my line slack,
unsure of life in brackish waters.

I throw out my hook
again and again,
wait for a tug, a battle:
a fish to reel in, to bloody.

Planchette

Caliban licks the last moon-wish I leave
on your kitchen table. Brown paper wrapping

and cord unravel in the direction of Lourdes.
I sip you through a straw; the froth of milk

thickens as the house melts into morning.
I’ve locked your windows tight, put an extra

blanket on the end of your couch.  Men go
into town, do a slow dance, drink gin while

I spill talc on the inside of your shoes.  I ask
the planchette questions, stoke deep kisses

with the bittersweet root you planned to carve
into a cane.   My arms ache.  I fold up

the final shadows I throw and later release you
from your nail in the sky.  Tonight, I will visit

your skin as a raven, stir rainfall and sugar
into the glass you have left beside your bed.

The Birds that Lay Down for Icarus

Cormorants conspire to peck one another
to death to furnish him with wings.

Owls call in the sleep of trees.
Huddled together after a night of sex,
their wings ripple patterns in sand.

Larks rise earlier than usual,
throw themselves against weathered wood.
The old man walking out in the blue morning
finds a hundred still birds, a trail
of blood outside windows and doors.

He gives thanks for the ease of his prophecy.
The old man settles to pluck at faith—
to tell his son of their good fortune.

In days fields are no longer
littered with bodies. The air ripples
with a silence like bird song.

The envelope is sealed
with wax hardened by cold tears.

Geordie’s Kitchen

In Inverness this morning it is ten degrees.
Somewhere, a baker is laying out dough to fold
into scones for early commuters.

The woodstove snaps hard oak, dried
for a year and stored beneath a tarpaulin.
We sit at a table talking: the rough edges

of a voice I pour over ice to understand.
We hold hands because we like the closeness.
His work-roughened fingers make mine

close up like snow-drops. He knows
they are cold and blows on them.
We could live here forever in this forgotten

farmhouse where I cannot comprehend
the language.  The old dog snores in a corner
behind a pile of favorite books that someday

Geordie will teach me to read.  I ask
if it’s all right if I open a jar from last summer’s
cellar. The tartness of late apples will taste

good on a crumbly leftover scone. We reheat
coffee, sip the last dregs of conversation until,
thick and woolly, his voice nudges us to bed.