Rivertown Rapture

By Joseph Hesch

With January's ice-scrim mist,

this riverside neighborhood

turns back to photo proof

black, white and gauzy gray.
Holiday colors have faded

like mid-September memories.

Tinder-dry evergreens,

erstwhile harlequin-lit window beacons

for passing ice-breakers,
now lay prostrate on streetside,
snow-dusted Christmas gravestones,

waiting for the herald crash

of the trash collecting Rapture.

And the perennial trees
standing sentinel nearby

at snow-footed attention,

look like lean black guardsmen,

their uniforms on backorder

until a too faraway Spring.

This week I wrote a poem that came from my walks and runs along the Hudson shore over the past 20 years. During the holidays, you could see the gumdrop-lit Christmas trees in windows over in Rensselaer. By early January, they were gone, the snow had come and the ice had choked the river. "Rivertown Rapture" is what I recall and imagine of those days. I've linked it up to dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night, where you'll find scores of other such imaginings and remembrances.

The Eve, the Day, the Joy

By Joseph Hesch

On the Eve and Day of Joy,
the presents were covered
in their smooth and sparkling raiment,
as were the trees and roads
in their fresh-snow greeting card grandeur.
Come the gathering, all those wrappings,
of packages and countryside,
were torn by child and adult,
each in their own way—
hand, scissor, sled, SUV. 
The magic was so quickly broken,
And what was smooth wonder
and sparkling mystery
the night before and at dawn,
had been torn, crumpled, stained
and rendered debris and nuisance
to everyone’s continued joy.
Moms and Dads near-curse the mess
of late-day. Kids ignore or revel in its chaos.
On Boxing Day the broken ugliness
of cold fact will be exposed.
Yet all will be forgotten with the advent
of a new year, a new hope,
a new anticipation
for the sleek magic of the Eve and
the Day we came together
and were joyously unbroken.

This Silent Night

By Joseph Hesch

Standing on the back porch,
11:39 PM on the 24th.
I’m cold and the chill air frosts
my nose and glasses. 
This is nothing new 
for a late December night,
but something’s different.
The wind chimes dingle-ding
just as they do in August. 
The trees sway and creak
as they did last month
and the months before that.
Perception stretching beyond
fading frame of consciousness,
maybe to snare hoped-for revelation,
I realize it isn't what I’m sensing
that's off. It’s what I’m not.

Over behind the big trees,
and the red-brick suburban bedsteads
lightly snoring smoke into the sky,
the normal hum and howl of
late-night on the Interstate
is absent.
I realize it’s because this is
That Night and travelers are safe
with their own, I hope.
And I want to stay here,
not travel another step,
to breathe in all this cold and quiet,
and breathe out crystaline clouds,
silent hymns of joy.
To be one with
this Silent Night.


Here's a little Christmas Eve poem that was inspired by standing on the same back step as my summer poem, "Illuminati." It's a true response I had to standing there waiting for my golden-haired semi-muse Mollie to do her thing (What else is new?) the late evening of December 24, 2009. Consider it my Christmas card to you, in thanks for the support you've given me in this first year of blogging poetry. I've linked "This Silent Night" up to dVerse Poets Pub for the crew's Open Link Night.

Empties

By Joseph Hesch

Walking through the old neighborhood,
full of derelict buildings and derelict souls, 
my head down against the December wind, 
I spied the shiny bit of sidewalk flotsam,
an empty bottle whose ice-blue label read
Crystal Palace Vodka.
Diamonds of ice sparkled within,
survivors of this vessel’s manifest

before it ended up on the rocks

or straight to the bottom.

It reminded me of finding such empties 

of temporary anesthesia in my youth.

More often than not, they were green bottles 
the abandoned shells of Thunderbird wine.

These days it seems even the street alkies,

have gone big time, drinking the same hooch

as higher class drunks, only with no olive.

I kicked the bottle from my path, and found

even more change to these tippling times-- 

the Palace empty wasn’t crystal.

Rather, it was made of plastic.

Of course it was. 
As I and my reverie 
stalked further up the street,

we came upon another empty,

green like those old bottles of T-bird.

This one was a child’s mitten

perched on a snowpile.

I wasn’t sure if it was waving

hello to the new world

or goodbye to the old, 
so I put it in my pocket and 
together we escaped this one.

The Trip In

By Joseph Hesch

In winter, the commute’s the same,
but the trip is so different.
I drive these glazed donut highways,
clogged commuter arteries
that would give me a heart attack
if I let them, or if I had the heart
for all this anymore.
Headed east to work yesterday I could
barely make out the stop-and-go
chain gang of prisoners in our
four-wheel jail cells because of
the low aspect of Warden Winter's
bloodshot eye, with which I played
the staredown game.
blink
Lost again. I always lose.

I could put the car in neutral
and still make it a couple of miles
before I would have to touch the wheel,
change my course from the
unnatural migration of which I am part.
Some birds are just like me,
they don’t migrate from this chill either.
I see them out my driver’s side window,
chains of starlings, shivering wing-to-wing,
stretching pole-to-pole --
roadside rosaries praying
for bread and a compass
that points south.

And now the final snowy flair
to a winter commute begins.
Flakes so big I can hear them
hit the window and so heavy
the trees will bow to their gravity,
their serious intent to remind me
who's really boss on my trip in.
This snow-light December
will turn into a bully soon enough,
snapping me awake to its will
with all the comfort of a white,
wet blanket whipped towel-like
to my bucket-seated backside.


If you know anything about me--real me and poet me--you know I have this love/hate relationship with winter and my workday world. Put them together and you come up with "The Trip In," this week's effort for dVerse Poets Pub's Open Link Night.

A Twelvemonth's Tears

By Joseph Hesch

The December weather has edges
and sharp points, like a star 
atop the Christmas tree. 
When I inhale, the air feels 
of peppermint but the flavor
favors woodsmoke from
my neighbor's fireplace.
It's during these nights, 
under a stardust canopy 
and a searchlight moon,
my eyes sting and water a bit. 
Not sure if it's from the the cold, 
the smoke, or the need to 
sweep the cinders
of another year from them.
Or perhaps this year
it's to wipe the spillings
of an old year away to prepare
for a brighter new one.
Perhaps.

Cold Truth

By Joseph Hesch
 
Last night the snow
laid its ghostly hands
upon all the horizontals outside.
Some of the verticals and
in-betweens, too,
felt its curative touch.
Fresh-fallen, so softly
whitening the dark,
smoothing the points and edges,
beautifying the uglies that were
too conspicuous before
the fall after Fall.
But, come windy morning,
that which was covered,
and those sojourners
not long passed
have carved their marks
on the once-immaculate.
And with dawn's rising light
they reveal
Winter’s cold truth.

I wrote this poem back in February, right after I began this journey upon the vast sea of zeroes and ones. I think only a few people other than close friends have actually seen it, what with it being "old" and my being just a funny name when I posted it. So, with a few edits, I'm re-introducing "Cold Truth" to visitors at dVerse Poets Pub for the Dec. 27, 2011 Open Link Night, which I happen to be hosting. I think it's a proper poem for this Winter, to remember the past year and my latest journey, leaving my marks, my truth, on pages both white and virtual.