WEATHER VANE

A chicken, four compass points, and an arrow

Placed on the peak of a second-story roof

Said little about the wind--

Just its direction--

Nothing more than a useless ornament,

Someone noted and looked away.

Until one day it fell to the ground in a high wind,

Toppled from its hundred-year-old perch

Without ceremony or ritual.

Tossed to the back of an old chicken house,

Among galvanized chicken feeders,

Nothing more than a discarded relic,

Someone noted and closed the old wooden doors

To the brooder where baby chickens had been raised.

I kept looking up for the old weather vane

As if it were a bad habit that I couldn’t break,

My eyes scanning the roof line without seeing

The wind’s direction among compass point letters,

Without seeing the motion of the arrow.

There was only an empty space

Below the twisted oak leaves.

Where the weather vane had been,

There was no direction,

No magnetic north,

No compass,

And the sun was covered

By dark wind clouds that

Made clocks run back and forth

Arrowless,

Chaos shook the window panes of the house

And rain shuttered the glass

Until I could bear it no longer

And set out for the chicken house

Drenched and blinded

To search for the old weather vane

Thrown into a dark corner,

Useless and bent,

Rusted and shabby,

I carried it to a metal worker,

Who restored each part

And ascended a ladder to install

It back on the roof peak beneath the tree leaves,

Where it makes sense of the wind and

Its breathless motion. 

© cmheuer, 2018

VANQUISH HATE

Vanquish hate.

Capture every last word of it

Before it escapes on loathsome breaths.

Scramble its deceitful messages

Until they cannot be heard or read.

Words exist that have no venom.

Rescue them!

Save them from angry slogans,

From loaded guns and malignant lies.

Give these quiet words air to breathe.

And they will rise again

On the haunted breaths of fallen voices.

They will drown out the diabolic hiss

And emerge anew bearing

Light and reason.

©cmheuer, 2018

MYTHIC GRANDMOTHERS

Their stories were told around dinner tables,

Under trees in backyards as busy hands

Shucked corn or shelled butter beans.

Anecdotes grew into short narratives

And into life lines drawn across generations,

Myths carried by word of mouth

As if sung in epic poems.

One birthed twelve children with nine surviving;

All nine said she always smiled.

A hand-colored photo was taken by a photographer,

Traveling from house to house.

She sat on a bench in a purple dress with a lace collar;

her husband stood behind her. 

She looked at the photographer. 

Her husband looked at her. 

It hung over a fireplace

Long after their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

One was photographed for her wedding.

She and her husband stared at the photographer.

Her high-necked lace gown was kept in a closet. 

A large hand-colored portrait of her was taken in a studio.

She sat on a high-backed chair

In a dark green dress holding a red rose.

One nursed her children through diphtheria.

One starved and gave what food she had to her son.

One had a house full of laughter and hand-me-downs,

Depression era rations, home-made fudge,

And macaroni with cheese and tomatoes.

One traveled on a boat across the Atlantic with her only child.

Pneumonia and starvation were their companions.

Her husband--killed in the first world war. 

One made baby beds out of empty cigar boxes

Lined with white lace and pink flannel,

For little girls who called her Nannie.

One didn’t know she would have grandchildren.

One died at 83.

One died at 34 bringing her son to Ellis Island;

Some said she was buried at sea;

Some said she was buried on land.

One rests forever beside her husband.

One was lost and found

Almost a century later. 

State of New York

Department of Health of the City of New York

Bureau of Records

Standard Certificate of Death.

The name of the cemetery listed.

©cmheuer, 2018

FIDDLE, BANJO, and GUITAR

Open windows carry the sound of

A fiddle and banjo played louder

Than the cicadas’ drumming songs

Or the hoot owls’ calls

For Saturday Night revelry

In overalls and house dresses

Damp with summer’s long days. 

A guitar, slung over the shoulder,

Rests on a knee bent for a low chair

And pillows spread out on the floor

In a candle light’s golden glow.

Bare feet and the light-fingered strum of

New-born songs wander onto a balcony

High above the street with voices raised

To roof top rows

In a moonlight’s somnolent flow. 

Unrecorded rhythms and rhymes

Set to air and left to thread their way

Unguided across the girth of stars,

Unleashed to rise and fall,

Spread out to fields and alleys,

Sail towards a horizon

Where some standing still and far away

In the night

Might hear a phrase that

Has never been played or sung

Before or after. 

 

© cmheuer, 2018

RIVERSIDE

To sit beside a river near the lap of shallow waves

where water smooths out the sand.

In the distance a deep channel

carries motor boats and mariner winds

up and down the currents for the pleasure of it,

for the bounce of the bow,

for the dip of the stern,

for the stiff blast of air against the face

that drowns out phonetic sounds with a motor’s roar.

To sit in the middle of a river on a dry boulder

where water rushes past large stones.

Wild, overgrown banks are set in motion  

by wind-blown branches,

shores are close enough to call across,

a bridge is low enough to see

anyone standing beside the river bed,

and it is shallow enough to walk across

when there are long droughts and dry wells.

To sit on a curb and watch river water

flood historic districts and tobacco warehouses.

Its overflow rises to the tops of street signs

that serve as underwater map pins

set afloat like channel buoys

to mark bateau boats unearthed,

slave auctions hushed,

warehouses burned, and  

African American burial grounds paved over.

To sit by a riverside remembered

and pause the water’s flow.

©  cmheuer, 2018

WILD FLOWER

Deep grooves of sun-dried mud,

uneven baked soil, crumble into dust

and undermine bipedal footsteps set each year

upon a wood’s dirt road to find a wild flower

rooted in the decayed husk of an old log.

One flower, two leaves, a pink petal—

Venus slipper—never to be picked,

to be observed, unlike any of the others

that grow in mass, dye the fields with RIT colors,

and stage wild dances in stiff winds.

This one startles the eye,

draws long legs to a crouch,

for a close-up, surprise intrusion

on its easily missed, quiet declaration

of another year discovered.   

©cmheuer, 2018

APPARITIONS

Apparitions live within mind folds;

dart in and out like zig-zagged thunderbolts;

briefly illuminate the dark with summer heat lightning.

These vague, shadowy creatures have to be read silently

without lip movement or voice;

they roam at will across sensed landscapes

And haunt bleak, time-filmed realms.

Eavesdropping discloses their dialogues as

they assemble themselves

into harmonizing strings and babbling tin-cans—

strange, discordant flickers of ephemeral text—

unrestrained, jagged pulses that surge forward and retreat.

These shades command attention in dark nights;

seize upon stillness to breed their frenzied lineage;

torment their hosts with incessant jolts; and

fling open doors to fear and invention.

Hovering specters flood cavernous minds,

shapeshift to elude capture and

taunt any who want to behold them. 

©cmheuer, 2018