cornbread and beans . . .

This world, with all its rooms, is my only home.
No one leaves without returning.

We always meet again, so oil the front-porch swing;
prepare the cornbread and beans.

But keep it simple - no flagons of champagne.
No lengthy discourses, no long sighs of farewell.

No need to come in out of the sunshine and rain
until we sit down to the cornbread and beans.

Bill K. Boydstun
used with permission

what lifts love to such a peak

What lifts love to such a peak as this?
-not the impetuosity of youth:
we no longer remember our first kiss -
or, in remembering, trim at the truth.

-Bill K. Boydstun

Reprinted here with permission of the author.

The Man in Motley

The man in motley
dances there
up and down a tilted stair,
lightly.

He does not show
us where
(unless it is the stair)
nor why, but only how to go.

He dances lightly there,
first up, then down;
he dances in the air,
he dances on the ground.

His grace is learned,
his smile a powdered face:
he turns to counterturn,
to dance in place.

Is it enought to follow
a dancer in the air,
a motley man on a tilted stair,
no matter how he goes?

The man in motley
dances there
up and down a tilted stair,
lightly.

-Bill K. Boydstun

The Man in Motley is reprinted here with the permission of its author. The poem originally appeared in First Harvest.

Diamondback

Down the back steps -
warned by the cadence of his tail
I retreat
then reappear
through the door
jerkily, an imperfect harbinger

I measure time down a smooth barrel

an infinity
of brotherhood between us
even after
there is nothing more
than shattered rubies
and grisled diamonds
scattered
among blades of grass.

-Bill K. Boydstun

Diamondback is reprinted here with the permission of its author. The poem originally appeared in First Harvest.

poem

On Hearing Belatedly of a Friends Death
for Ruth Weisner

We grab death at awkward moments,
our friends a thousand miles away:
pictures and old poems in the mail,
a posthumous volume,
bitter sweet in its delay.

Byron's Grotto, Portovenere,
an Italian Summer,
8 August 1979,
a clipped clear photograph -
you, brown dress, brown skin, demure.

A heap of broken images,
bits and bits of desultory things:
February 19, 1981,
your shadow in the morning,
in the evening, the rush of wings.

-Bill Boydstun

poem

Wind Worder

Sweet Sir,
master of the minimal,
to meet upon a leaf,
make tea from dew,

talk for days -- you talking,
me listening finally --
not as though you were still teaching,
but mere

ly life
upon a leaf
beneath a stone:
a moldy earth that holds it all,

heals it all --
I, as pilgrim,
prepared for little --
circling that pale stone,

you, a part of the white air,
the wormy earth,
giving,
explaining over tea

the humdrum
necessary existence -- the sufficiency --
the becoming --
life

upon a yellow leaf
beneath a white stone.

© Bill Boydstun

poem

On the Commitment of a Poet, Eighteen Years Old
for Barbara

If we had known the depths of your quiet,
Or looked at eyes as often as at words,
We might have quelled the silent slow riot
Behind your eyes' cage full of fallen birds.
We did not hear the keen of crumpled wing,
That sudden low departure. Only you
Could see the Sparrows' last great try to cling
To air that was no longer clear nor blue.

And now you hold your song in muted stead,
In sterile room of tall blank walls of white,
Where no one comes or goes, but some are led.
You move as moved but sing in us at night.
We say your words, the razored edge is gone:
We say the words, we cannot sing the song.

© Bill Boydstun