GATHERING CLOUDS

Huddled against the wall of a back room

Where the oaks’ large limbs couldn’t fall,

Knees drawn up and held with clasped hands,

Fuses pulled from the breaker box, antenna disconnected,

Wind-whipped clothes pulled off the line, damp and unfolded,

As gathering clouds blotted out the light.

Silently they watched through the window;

Early winds billowed the voile curtains,

Stirred the over-heated room like hand-held fans.

Rain drops hit the screen and in a spitting flash of light,

A tear in the fabric appeared,

The foundation of the house shook,

Windows gasped,

And dark clouds descended like swarms of locusts.

Eyes and ears are covered with trembling hands,

As glaciers calve and melt, seashores submerge,

Oceans bear oil slicks and plastic islands,

And elephants and lions disappear,

Those who speak or write of it are not heard or read

In the thundering clouds.

© cmheuer, 2014  

HEADWINDS

Tall pines are rarely still, even in quiet sunlight

The highest needles sway while the lower branches and

Trunks balance out the motion with horizontal and vertical calm.

A recognition of upper winds travels through veins,

Knowledge being a tree’s birthright,

Headwinds forewarn a gale, counter the normal easy passage of

Air through the conifers’ slender fingers,

Create the power to bend and twist each branch

Caught up in an invisible brawn.

There is a line between a breeze and a tempest,

Like a spider’s first thread cast as an anchor in the wind,

To forge a way across the silence to the loudest torrent of air and water-

Fierce, rapid drumming against the ear. 

Predator wind, vine-wrapped around the trees, 

Flashing air split in search of the tallest

Trunks in a thundered clash, tangled arms broken,

Bark stripped from top to base in a wide swath

And threaded back into soil.

© cmheuer, 2013

MACHINES

Assembled moving parts work a certain way,

Carve into time like notched wheels of old watches,

Insert themselves in a room or a landscape

As naturally as overgrown weeds in a garden

Untended at the end of a season and

Left to winter’s slow erasure.

Hollow vibrations drown out nature’s warning calls,

Create a language of background noise

Overhead in a field of clover,

Fading along the railroad tracks or a country road,

Above the wind’s howl the engines drone and

Pale blue lights sweep every space, indoor and out--

Surround sound and backlit screens multiply,

Seep into every corner and every hand and eye--

A flood of energy moves and heats the air,

Stores sound and light,

Replaces mind, hands and feet,

Becomes as obsolete as wasted muscle and bone

Fails, in the dark of night,

Machines echo off walls and faces stare

Before the sudden sharp plastic metal twist

And there is nothing but silence in the air.

© cmheuer, 2013

OLD PAIR OF BLUE JEANS

Like an old pair of blue jeans washed

Until the denim dye fades to a pale, blue mist

And the cloth takes on the character of another skin,

Thin and unraveling at the knees,

Molded and worn out remnants of cotton twill

Cling to my bare legs and silently languish. 

And the slow disintegration of the woven threads

Begins my descent out of a pale light;

My headlong sprint into the heaviest fog,

Too dense to see my footsteps fall,

With jeans torn, thorns cut through to the thighs,

Blood droplets seed the earth and deep mist spreads

Through the tall grass and thickets as

Tree trunks fuse with the thick, blue-grey haze

And tree tops become obscure.

Breathless at the end of my run, the old jeans are vague now

And disappear among the vapors.

© cmheuer, 2013

HEAT WAVE

Sweat bristles on the skin in a moist film strip,

Runs, transparent and beaded, unreeled,

Light traces out the edge of the dampened hairline,

The shape of the forehead

Dripping wet into the eyes, where salt burns

And clouds the scene.

A heat wave blisters the earth’s surface,

Invades airspace first,

Subdues the things I try to see second,

Traps them all, like animals caged before slaughter,

Like chickens crated and stacked on a flat-bed truck,

Their feathers scattered along a buckled road.

Leaves wilt, water draws back from the pond’s edge,

Mud hardens and cracks,

Trees stare out from the shade of

Their parched green skins and shudder in a slight breeze

That drives in the heat dome and slams shut an unknowable door

That takes away the draft and stifles sound.

Raccoons cool their nursing bellies in a bird bath;

Sun bleach overexposes everything it touches;

Slowly wicks away water and burns yellow and brown;

Heat surfs down to earth, casts a flood light,

Marbles the forest floor with sun spots that grow as

The living curl up, the hot liquid air runs

Like melted wax down a candle where nothing can fly

So close to the sun.

© cmheuer, 2013

FLOCKS

Like stars on a journey

Birds in air and sheep on land

Set an arrow in bow and

One flies point

One walks point

Others follow rules

Steer to average

And the numbers grow

Super organisms

Wing tip to wing tip

Side to side

Time flies, catches a wind

Walks in lockstep along steep slopes

And when the muscles wear down and the wings falter

When the bones ache and the feet stumble

After seed is devoured and grass is gnawed

Branches bow in a weighted droop

And fields and thickets lie trampled flat

The sheer number of them

Crowded inside a skull

Migrate across the mind

Crawl at the feet

Circle about the head

Roost until startled

Scatter and re-group

Descend and rise

A voice on air

An image in my mind

© cmheuer, 2013