Guided Tour

Thirteen cents, the kid
From across the street
Told me. Five years old,
I thought everything
Was bigger, better

Than me—beyond reach.
Rex Hyatt (his name
Rang while mine sputtered)
Said, 'Course it's worth it—
I been there, ain't I?

So, handing over
The coins—bright as bronze,
Shaken carefully
From my glass pig—
I followed him out

To the field behind
My house. Like the cape
Of a magician,
The grass gleamed and waved
Above my head. Rex

Led me through its dance,
Pointing out a stump
Wrapped in vines, broken
Branches, a wasp's nest
Gray and empty. Where's

The great thing you found?
I asked, picking burrs
From my slacks. Pretty
Close, he said. We walked
Some more; finally

We came to what I
Thought was a thistle.
I looked at Rex. So?
He said, Wait, watch this.
With his knife he cut

Off a stalk. Look here—
It's all full of milk!
I stared, touched the stub,
Licked my finger. Sour:
Not like what I drank

With my Oreos.
There the tour ended.
The grass, gold and dry,
Shimmered around Rex—
He vanished. Back home

I shook the glass pig,
Thinking of the gum
Or box of crayons
I could've gotten.
The pennies tingled

With a sound sharper,
Smaller than before—
Something like laughter.
I wanted magic,
Rex: the kind that swept

You away that day.
I didn't know then
I could be nourished
By milk that came sour
And guarded by spines.



Found Poem: Sarajevo Rose

                    Pattern of circles
          Blooming in the pavement struck
                    By a mortar shell.



Elegy For The One-Hundred-Year-Old Douglas Fir

Was this your slow-motion revenge
Against the house that spelled your death?
The builders must have severed your roots.
He checks the snapshot: needles, green
Two years ago, now grown brown
As though you'd turned deciduous;
Limbs twisted and hanging like deadfalls
Waiting for a signal; the sap
That streaked your cracking trunk with a drool
Gold and hard. And always the wind
Making you creak and lean toward his home.
Despite his wish, he calls the cutters.
The chainsaws only halt their whine
When another chunk of you—huge
As a wine cask for the gods—lets go.
With each impact, he feels the shudder
Through his feet like a private earthquake:
As if this ground wants to leave with you.
When the noise and shaking stop, he finds
Too much blue spreads overhead.
The height above your stump is crowded
With the smell of resin. He leans down
To gaze into your warped bull's-eye,
Ripples frozen in your well.

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

November, 2009

Poems

Michael Spence

Michael Spence spent a hitch as a naval officer aboard an aircraft carrier that has recently been decommissioned. On returning to Seattle, he took up driving public-transit buses, a job he has worked at for twenty-five years. His poems have appeared recently in The New Criterion, The Hopkins Review, Measure, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review. New work is forthcoming in The Chariton Review, The New York Quarterly, The North American Review, and The Sewanee Review. His third book, Crush Depth, has just been published by Truman State University Press.