Rustin Larson‘s poetry appears in the anthology Wild Gods (New Rivers Press, 2021). Recent poems have appeared in London Grip, Poetry East, The Lake, Poetryspace, Pirene’s Fountain, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. His chapbook The Cottage on the Hill was published by Cyberwit.net in April of 2022.
He is on faculty in Maharishi International University’s MFA in Creative Writing program.

St. Patrick’s Day

A sparrow batters through one of the bell vents
holding a shamrock in its beak.
Everyone rushes to the nearest tavern.
It is time for a long walk and then for sleep.

I deliver your car (with the help of a friend)
like your newborn, your first born.
“Now slow, easy, don’t panic, and don’t press down
so hard on the accelerator; it will get you nowhere.”

You were the intrepid girl I kissed,
once in the doorway of your dorm,
once in the big blue cherry of a Ford
trying to skid up the hill of solid ice,

wheels spinning black water
quickly freezing again to ice.

Water

We have to remain in this life,
take care of the window sill
that cracks from extremes of summer
and winter. We have to be here
when the rain comes, and wait
long enough to adore the lace
that covers the sky when we feel
all our old deaths have come to meet us.

We stop driving the interstate,
and on a narrower highway
we come to an overlooked landmark
which says, “This pump was once
the center of this town this famous
incredibly dead person drank from.”
We have an opportunity.
You stop me from lifting the crank.
There’s something undesirable
about drinking the same water
the dead man drank. Our history
is full of dead men. Better to drink
some safe water where they treat it
with the solutions of the present.
I tell you to wait in the car.

The first water that comes out is red.
“Like blood,” I say. “No surer sign
of life than that, now is there?”
And then it slowly dwindles to gray,
and then the fresh blue stuff.
I even drink from the battered cup
chained there and see you hiding
behind your fingers in the Pontiac,
it’s air conditioner dripping water
on the hot pavement.

On This Earth, We Can Walk

Have days, enjoy the whistling
after the thunder and the purple threads
of nature gone far beyond
the safety nets of our common sense.

We can lie down and hear
the snakes of our hearts weaving
through our anxieties,
leaning toward us and we are
in a world with the ships
of our branding, our airy creatures,
our snake passions,
our beginnings.

I love your mother-face of belief,
the still crumple of your blouse,
the clothes, the you of two,
of all the nets. I am not nature
but one boy with a bird’s share
searching for poverty. The cold
makes the senses take note of themselves.
Hand the bricks up the ladder.
The cloud ocean hasn’t forgotten.
We climb the peaks of our angles,
spend the night under the pools
of moonshine. We chase
the flower-can’t-be-still, blue caverns
to go to, silk threads to weave,
our city of too many thoughts,
we eat the peaches of satisfaction,
the apples of love, we banish
the word cartridge from our family.