Creative work by Rebecca Pyle has recently appeared, or will soon be in, The Honest Ulsterman, Posit, Cobalt Review, Gulf Stream, Gris-Gris, Belle Ombre, The Menteur, Guesthouse—poetry, fiction, artwork. American, Rebecca lives in the mountainous state called Utah, and owns two easels. See rebeccapyleartist.com.
The Needs of Trees
Dear darlings, yes, I fall into you,
You, good arms, of trees.
River’s a
Stream of music
With small and nimble
Variations; you, tree-limb-arms,
Stronger than a car,
Than man-made bridge. Cradle me.
Why isn’t water cold? Why do I think
It warm? Because you’re saving me
From dying, proving I’m alive
As you hold me in your arms. I am
Not cold or dead. Content held.
Death never. No Farewell to Arms.
Trees’ arms bridging, crossing
Undoing, merging darks,
Half-lights.
I had balcony. Not enough.
Blue Medicine Bottles,
and Future Time
Thank you for the bottles
Of medicine. I feel small
Sheltered inside dark glass.
Is it blue or is it
Brown? Shiny: one color
At dawn, another at
Millimeter markings
Of nameless night.
Leave night unnamed. Unnamed!
Unbearable, the night; abandoned
At birth by its own mother, all
Previous nights.
I find that abandoned father
In the dark: diffuse listening,
Slow solutions. Truth.
Men are diffuse captains.
I take your medicines, but not often.
Too strong, night medicine, dads’ drugs,
High on ledge and shelf of cliff above
Sharpest darkest outrageous dark.
I in pale garment of moonlight, failing:
Moon’s light makes us feebly miss
The targets of our wishes, make us
Stay home, to be warm. I’ve laid out
Night’s dark blue, black, thunder-shudder
Batik: designs wild, shattered, sharp.
Splinter-struck, like stars doomed.
Too much sky-jewelry, really, aren’t
Stars?
Distracting best of us, fooling us into
Into believing—they guard us.
Wittgenstein of Cambridge wrote
The Blue and Brown Books.
He’s gone. So give me
Medicine-bottle blue night sky, with
Crumpling, uncrumpling batik of
Black.
Remind me Stephen Hawking
Once was coxswain
Young and beautiful in Cambridge.
His
Hands turned limp as bones
And rags, lying at his lap
Like rescued fish.
Bicycles still fill Cambridge streets.
He Hawking became slyest captain
Undeterrable:
Coxswain into space, dark
Tomorrow-furrows: blue as bluest
Dark-tomorrow medicine bottle,
Brown as Niles of time, dark brown
Forward-batiked rowboats
Of future. His broken medicine
Bottles: waiting.
The Archway
We will become
As trees the archway over the
Arch of loss. We will become
The street that began somewhere,
Which ends somewhere, and we will
Be puzzled by its accidentalness, the
Earth and the pavement over it so bluish!
And the trees that were planted and then
Joyed in their height, their happinesses.
Trees breathing your breaths, birds
Embroidering with their morning cries
New designs and patterns, for Death:
All, birds are crying, inevitable deaths.
The Galway Review 