My word

My word

Nothing

Is yet elastic

To snap at

The suggestion

Of survival

Which pits

Something

Against some

Thing

In order to

Gain some

Kind

Of traction

Laid out

As in

The penal colony

Waiting for

The other

Stylus

To drop

A declaration

Of interdependence

Your words

Taste like

Cardboard

In my mouth

Let me adjust

Your confession

Until they sweetly

Bleed

For your fits

Part in mine

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

In time was hoarded

In time was hoarded

The puffing steam

Of a brown mare boarded

By a frozen stream

Blanketed, her head

Points west

Her hoofs stamp dead

A mouse's nest

Whose small brood

Was yet too bare

To be stabled with food

Like the mare

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

One thin use

One thin use

Of the fast-grown

Cottonwood

Is its shade

Barking up

Arroyos

A storm

Short-tempered

Thick limbs away

Slakes a promise

To flood

To melt the clay

And cast the man

Beyond each dry

Defining sun

Anvil clouds

Chain the mountains

With stitches of light

And evaporate

Sparking nothing but static

From the creosote bush

Under this stand

Fire weeds have lodged

Too dry to leave

Throwing shade

The cottonwood crown

Inspires loyalty

But no hope

It's bad wood

For building

As another storm

Makes a smoky approach

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

Before the quarry

Before the quarry

Filled

In the Triassic

Red-bed

Turning over

A raptor's print

Beneath

The beer cans

And neglect

I shalely slipped

Upon

A premise

Split in time

From muddy

Banks

To run on

Free

To hunt

With meat

Abandon

Hope

To roll in clay

To tar the canvas

Of my skin

To claw

A mark

Precarious

Found before

The quarry

Filled

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

There is a way

There is a way

Of dying

Not yet out

Of fashion

Still

In upper rooms

Familied largely

By daughters

And sons

Late to the last

Gasping after

Noon

Still

Slipping on

Garage- sold toys

A kin to wonder

To sustain

Their children

Dancing

Not falling

Still

Broken

And not fixed

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

Then you arrived

Then you arrived

Already made

Of alabaster

Carved in part

From these my

Fumbling fingers

And toes

Foregoing their grip

Tripping on stairs

That

Rising like pews

Cross- sawn

Oaken ladders

Impeded a saintly

Assumption

Shine lightly on

This rushed apprentice

Who wildly straws

His setting fresco

The original plan

Was to complete

The sky

Before your

Immaculate grain

Was borne

Reeling

In the clouds

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

Sometimes

Sometimes

A great notion

Takes drowning

In stride

Walking under

Water

Not flying

With the fishes

Small bubbled

Escaping

Each word

Contains itself

Free of sentence

Breaching at

The surface

Tension curved

Sometimes

A song

Is just

The blues

Schooling

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

The withered palms

The withered palms

Of Sassafras

And pointed

Sweetgum fruits

Litter childlike

Rolling

Hills down

Into fields

Thence given

To free ways

To wheels

Ground to eat

Up scenery

Sojourning truth

And lies abandoned

In motel pools

False ponds

To leap

From whether

To whether

Never too long

On landing

Above my head

The trees go

All veiny

Like atlas maps

Taped and torn

From use

And a false spring's

Inconstant motion

No shelter

Leaned to

In violets

Thresh holds

This grass

Of yellow

Dying light

In December

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

When overtaken

When overtaken

By the youth

Of old

This here

Scrubbed pine

Got carved

A land marked

Oozing pitch

Gasping at

Tiny tundras

Wreathed

And ungrabbed

Moss

I claw my way

Inoriginal

Followed closely

By a fly

Of clouds

The die here

A small mirror

Tractless

Faints into

A whiff

Of sphagnum

It spores

Carried

Off to bed

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013

Heade's "The Coming Storm"

Heade's "The Coming Storm"

Is an impossible

Curve

Of harbor

Where a monstrous

Halibut draped

Deflects

The drowning sun

In a sail

Of dirty weather

Which figures

A clear-minded

Fisher

Who whiles

Grounded

Noting

A tiny triangle

Composed

Declining to reef

Its canvas before

An impossible curve

Of harbor

Tom McGlynn

copyright 2013