Paul O. Jenkins lives in New Hampshire and increasingly in the past. His poems and short stories have appeared in numerous journals including Blue Unicorn, The Avalon Literary Review, Westchester Review, The Madrigal, Last Leaves, The Galway Review, The Northern New England Review, and The Field Guide.

“Men at Sixty” (after Donald Justice)

Men at sixty have learned to cast
A certain smile that betrays
A new concern they still present
But have forgotten how to feel.
Each feeble dawn sparks humble light
That dims their eyes, shadows senses,
Eclipses ardor born of hope
And settles for an evening view.
Men at twenty cannot foresee
That they will ever spurn a love,
Forego free beer, shun attention,
Nod off on couches furred by dogs.
But men at eighty may recall
Their final years with sheepish rue
And recognize too late the sheen
That tinted their remaining views.

“End of Summer”

What I remember best about
Summer’s end,
Though it was only late July,
Was Mr. Tremblay
Fluffing up the timothy
In our newly tedded field,
An annual favor he bestowed
Because he liked to see
My widowed mother smile.
I stockpiled those three days of curing,
Little last hurrahs of liberty,
And nestled in embrace of grass,
Forestalling avalanche of August days
That swept me in their wake towards algebra.
While sunbaked windrows lay
In patient resignation,
Ready for the baler,
I heard already awful summons,
Alarm clocks, idling buses, tardy bells.
What I remember last about
Summer’s end,
As August swaggered in,
And our field and I lay crew cut ready
For the fall,
Was how the pallor of
My mother’s wedding band
Galled the hayer’s eye.
And how when she’d unroll
For him the baled bills
His hand
Lingered
On hers
Just a moment longer
Than it had to.

“Uncoupling”

Three hearts beat inside her, she felt,
As she rowed him about, expert on water.
Each oar stroke pushed them forward
Every plash hushed voices nagging her
That joys like these belonged to others only.
She regarded him, perfectly deficient,
The father of the pulse she felt more strongly
Every day now, a core sufficient to
Withstand remaining doubts, shush the voices,
Fuse the pair as family that, honor bound,
She knew he could not betray.
She kept time that moment, a rhythm
Absolute in its simplicity,
A breath she shared with wind
Before a heron’s cry awoke
The germ of failure, her oldest friend,
Incarnate on shore that night
In form of spattered panties,
The nexus fled, the prompt for voices to emerge
Again triumphant,
While he, oblivious, snored in rhythms
That conjured memories of oars in water,
And stirred the process of uncoupling.