Quick note I write to myself
By Lawrence Bridges

 

It seems to be in another language.
Where was I? Shivering at the gossip
and news, terrified when catastrophe
was ignored or accepted as the norm?
Where was I? In public when people
came out when the rains stopped,
people with the same terror on their lips
wandering around with a head
on top of the heads, unquestioning.
My fear is that the terrifications of the news
is the tyranny of weakness, timidity, and cowering.
My fear is my rigid critique is intolerance.
The head atop my head calms me, if unwise,
takes each day as a first day, not a last.

 

The frozen nowhere

Glittering across the playing field
tweezers attached to small fingers
for dabbing into snacks, stickiness-free,
I'll not wash until the deluge rinses us all
coming, as it has, after Christmas and Fall
in a row of world-worsening sighs.
Sleep welcomes the uncontested and those
just waiting for verdicts or cash payments
or simply facing the truth. Today I'm on a game show,
tomorrow an appointment I hope cancels.
Thursday someone will call in the morning
and it will become a late night. By Saturday
I'll wonder why I don't just drive away
toward the snow where afternoons repeat
in the quiet of a frozen nowhere.

 

Lawrence Bridges from U.S, has published poetry in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016).