Blackberries
 
Self-help you find does not help.
Summer green vines bend
but refuse to break.
 
In winter you find yourself
armed to the teeth
against these spiked
hollow reeds,
pushing mud
with your knees.
 
What have you left
but shears and buckets
that will not contain
this unwieldy wicker,
and your cuts lack any grace.
 
Recalcitrant, they will
not yield to the shapes
you’ve imagined.
 
I dreamed once
of tending a garden like Eden
then thought, with fear,
of the terrible fecund yearning.
Now I struggle
with this small space.
 
We are simply overrun
and must face this cold wet truth,
or this dust dragonfly reality,
depending on the season.
No matter the reason or time you choose,
thorns find seams through gloves.
 
And the mire finds ways
to pace short days
or the slow waning days.
Depending on the season.
 
Do not struggle,
the ones you pay,
all say.
 
[First published in Clapboard House, Spring 2008]
 
 

My Dad’s Morning Beard
 
Father. The word a slinking stranger in the dark—
top billed in noir thriller dreams that still leave me
 
sweating in my sheets. How quickly your love
turned to a forgetting, as you washed your hands
 
and drank away your guilt every late afternoon.
It must have been grueling work, every dry mouth morning tasting
 
like the most carefully prepared shame, your tongue coated
with regret. I have a sharp memory of your brushing my soft cheek
 
with your beard, a strong wire—I can still feel this moment
of peerless tenderness: I like to believe it was morning,
 
you were clear eyed and your love was not chemically induced.
This simple gesture surprised you—I felt your embarrassment,
 
just as it surprised me. I am almost sure now you were
as sober as your very own ghost that morning. And you felt these
 
tender seconds with deliberate fury against
your irresistible self-conflagration.
 
[Previously published in Cantaraville 11]
  
 
 
Thursday Morning, 8:54 A.M.

Sun on the small lake
All that moves are the light jewels
playing 16th notes against
the blue bottle glass glint
The wind has swallowed itself
motionless as catatonia.

 

© Rod Peckman

Bio:
 
Rod Peckman lives in a beautiful space--on a small lake in the wonderful state of Washington. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Barnwood, Juked, Silenced Press, The Foundling Review, The Tonopah Review, and The Willows Wept Review. Rod works for a large library system outside of Seattle and thanks his Yellow Labrador for her infinite patience.