Gephyrophobia

Gephyrophobia

A woman on the news last night

described her experience with 

gephyrophobia—the intense fear of bridges. 

Driving or walking, it doesn’t matter,

she said, her mind stays suspended:

What if I fall? Is there anything below?

Can I make it to that far end?

Afterward, in bed, I imagined the

quickened breathing, the racing heart

that must accompany all her passages.

The trestle of her teen years spanning

that great chasm between adolescence

and adulthood. Her first job, first kiss,

so many firsts that draw us across

a threshold toward crossing a broad gap.

How anxious her heart must be at each

small step between two destinations. 

But now, sitting here on this bench of today,

midway across the bridge of my thirties,

I can feel it, just a bit, a discontented heat

glowing in my neck, dampness on my palms.

I want to wait here, like her, eyes closed,

breathing deeply, waiting for a partner, 

a guide to shuttle me forward somehow,

to tell me how long to stay standing here, 

and when would be best to charge ahead. 

Someone to ask if they know the way, 

whose knowledge can take over for mine

as they point out landmarks in the distance

and clarify directions and shortcuts that will help.  

But all I see are trees and thinning clouds,

and behind them daylight pouring down

onto these weathered boards

that my boots now seem to be 

stepping over, casting their shadows

before me and beneath me, 

first left, then right,

one after another. 

Digging a Grave

Digging a Grave

I start by marking four corners.

Uncurling a worn ribbon of line tape,

I measure the edges, then

perforate the perimeter with

a hickory handled spade.

To the two red-tailed hawks

perched above me in the cedars,

it must look like a long bed,

a morbid, four-poster affair,

its thin sheet of crab grass

tucked trimly under the mattress.

Next, I shear off the top layer

of grass and roots and twigs,

to expose a pad of black soil, 

an oversized door that leads

to a room no one wants to see.

Then the real labor begins,

the long slog of shoveling.

I am all shoulders and forearms,

shifting clockwise around

this room I’m forming.

Outside, the mounds slowly rise,

dark piles of linens, old blankets

waiting to be washed and folded. 

I work with slow and shallow breaths,

careful not to wake the folks

asleep in the next dark room.

Already they cover their heads

with heavy pillows of stone

to drown out all this sound.  

Morning Meeting

Beside a beaten blacktop road in Kansas,
at the muddy edges of a shallow pond—
four sandhill cranes.

They punctuate the rim of the wet oval
with a peculiar regularity, spread apart
with some twelve feet between each.

The brown pond might be a round table
made of oak or maple or sycamore,
around which this quartet has met.

They lean their scarlet faces slightly forward,
adjusting their feathery elbows on the table
and gazing down their beaks at one another.

They might be here to settle a last will,
or discussing last night's ball game before
the boss enters the important board meeting.

Or maybe this is a diplomatic assembly,
its purpose to decide what to do about the
neighboring whippoorwills' ceaseless banter.

Whatever the issue had been, suddenly
it is resolved now, all taken care of.
One concedes, and the affair is over.

Simultaneously, eight wide wings unsettle
the dark water and lift the birds skyward.
Their meeting adjourned, they scatter apart

into the gray air, then come together again,
like the raindrops now joining together and
forming a tiny rivulet on the
single-pane
window
of this
barn.

My Shield

My Shield

A dark room, 

a chair beneath me, I assume.

Then a harsh, blinding flash—

a glaring bare bulb

reflecting off its silver globe

and directly into my eyes.

I slam them shut

and tilt my head down.

But next, a sudden shutdown 

to dark.

The flash in my retina dances,

then dims back to blackness.

Open the eyes, head back up.

Comfortable darkness.

Then it blazes back, brighter still.

Even closed, my eyes sting

against the jarring flash.

My eyelids press down harder,

the tiny muscles clenched against

my teary, shining cheekbones. 

Then, a hand. The hand

that first molded light into photons,

that first flicked fire to life,

that hand shields me, 

but only for an instant.

It reaches away, comes back.

The glaring light shudders, 

then darkens, 

and becomes a soft amber glow, 

filtered finally by 

a heavy, bronze garment

still being straightened over the bulb

by that hand, now joined by His other. 

Once a blinding blaze,

now only a gentle gleam— 

a radiance even—

illuminating His hands,

full of love, 

casting fingertip shadows 

on the dust-colored walls

of my heart. 

Sallie Mae, a poem

For any college graduate who's ever paid off ol' Sallie. You'll know where I'm coming from.



Sallie Mae, a poem

She landed, softly,

on the supple, white 

flesh of my thigh,

while I looked the other way,

blinded by a new freedom.

And as I looked on, 

she glanced around, 

checking that we were alone.

Then, her lance plunged into

 my soft, succulent skin.

I snapped back, smacked. 

But too late. 

She kicked off, 

swayed a bit, 

and buzzed off 

into the darkness, 

drunk on my blood.

Looking In, Looking Out

The Difference in Writing Fiction and Poetry

One of the classes I lead is a creative writing class, mostly focused on the development of strong, realistic fiction writing. This presents a few challenges to me, the largest of which is that I tend to write far more poetry than fiction myself. Not that I never throw down a good short story now and then, but poetry is much closer to the front of my compositional mind.

I tried and failed to explain this to my students, who - firstly - could not possibly fathom why anyone would ever consider writing poetry when not required to. Secondly, though, many of them didn't see how free verse poetry differs much from fiction writing. "It's just put into lines and stanzas," they said.

Well, no it isn't.

It's not just a completely different genre. It's a totally different view of the world, and a uniquely singular way of reporting it to the reader.

Writing fiction is about telling stories, and about looking into houses. It is about peeking into people’s lives, noticing the unnoticed, the small details that can make the fictitious realistic. The nervous swishing of a hand through hair, a man pouring his coffee in the kitchen, the fragile hips of an old dog swaying painfully as she ambles to the door – these are the things that often go unnoticed by us as we swing our sickles through the fields of life. 

But these are the moments that a fiction writer must catch and point out, saying to the reader, “See, I bet you would have missed that, wouldn’t you?” Well, here it is, lying truthfully on the page, adding that little bit of life that brings a story from being just a series of events, to being an episode of existence.  

Poetry is quite the opposite. If story telling is about looking in, then poetry is looking out. Poetry is gazing outward from your own window and telling the truth – the real truth – about what is there. In poetry, we make no efforts to hide reality, however simple or brutal it may be. 

What is mysterious, what is mortal, what is funny, what is too difficult or perhaps too obvious to think about – these are the forgotten and ignored horses that poets hitch to the front of the team. In this way, poetry and fiction share a heart – the heart of bringing the overlooked to the forefront of the readers’ attention.

I can only hope to show my students this, and to guide them to experience it for themselves.

Surviving wintertime

Surviving wintertime

is like trying to

strangle a porcupine.

Those beetle eyes

stare into yours, determined.

Does it even have a neck?

you think, as you try to

end this terrible encounter.

Its long quills stab at your chest,

icy needles piercing your

thin nylon jacket.

And when you finally give up

and fling the spiky critter to the ground,

you will look down at your

unfeeling fingertips,

dripping your happiness

into the now steaming snow.