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Chris Poetry

6 x 9 paperback, 118 pages 

The Morning I Married the Sky

a collection of poems

(selections below)

i tripped

 

i tripped

i tripped and fell

but as i fell

 

i invited everything

i passed

 

to fall

with me

for jogging almost

 

for jogging almost

every day barefoot

on asphalt. for standing

in my driveway to listen

to wind

 

for averting

my gaze and not greeting

you with sufficient

effervescence. for all this

 

and more i am proud

to be named this year’s

“neighborhood eccentric” i said 

to an empty veteran’s hall

may i walk with

may i walk

with the unapologetic

gait of the donkey

in pasture at once

purposeful and easy

as he flicks 

his ears to drive off

flies

Shackleton’s Men

 

i listened with a mixture

of disdain and wonder unsure

how to judge

these mad men who ventured

with Shackleton in wooden ships

for hundreds of days through

fields of ice, faces

swollen with frostbite,

limbs black and weak

from scurvy, bickering

in the wake of each

implacable rebuff,

while the great war ate the world,

and all for no reason

except to be first

to cross the snowy crown

of the planet and even then

they failed

 

until at the end i heard that one

of the men—his name

was Richards—

said he had no regrets

 

“it was something,” he said,

“the human spirit accomplished.

it was something

you tried to do.”

when i rounded the corner 
 

when i rounded the corner 
an expanded empty 
paper shopping bag 
was tipping back 
and forth in the road 
like a sow that couldn’t 
get up but after sorting 
through mail on the front 
steps i turned again 
it was doing cartwheels 
towards the intersection

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