1995

David Sheppard

Poems 1995

(The following poems were published in the
The Live Poets Society 1995 Anthology.)

The Ring

I lost a tiny little thing of yours,
slipped through a hole in my pocket
like a mouse squirming for freedom.
If it had been around my finger
none of this would have happened.

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Merced Falls, 1950

My old hobo of an uncle used to take us
into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada,
backpack us into the tule-clogged potholes
to gig frogs and fish for perch. We were
in gold country, the mountains of boulders
about us dredged from the Underworld.
At night we'd set out the trotline, lean
back on our sleeping bags to feel
the hot stones beneath us, view
the glowing swipe of stars overhead
and listen to bullfrogs' rubber-throat voices
croaking in and out of sync. When he talked
about the gods and the creation of the Universe,
I could feel Mother Earth turn under the heavens,
see Orion as a hunter of souls glittering
like flakes of gold dust thrown against darkness.
Sleep came with the warm night breeze,
the fine-fiddled tunes of crickets,
and the quiet stalk of Hermes, the sandman,
in the rocks beyond the lagoon.

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muse

like morning frost
laminating a landscape

like a rattlesnake's
well-tuned rage

like a gunshot echoing
off mountainsides

my father's ghost-voice
crackles a chilling breeze

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Understudy

He's some estranged creature
stalking elusively about the house.
Sometimes I corner him in the mirror,
but he's bashful, smiles shyly, slips out of sight.
One night his snoring woke me,
the monstrous honk frighteningly foreign.
Yesterday I caught him talking behind my back,
some lewd remark to a girl I admire.
His sordid behavior has no restraint,
the way he festers after innocence.
Still, he's the one they all acclaim.

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Full Moon at Sunrise

His mask gone at morning
the tumbled moon, pale and planet-like,
settling behind the mountain. No trouble
reading that stranger's mind.
A red-throated finch woke me, frightened
of something creaking about the heavens.
Sitting astride the old elm, he shrieked
as the bashful eye disappeared into darkness.
Or was his outrage for the other edge
of the earth? That bright-eyed sister
bringing the truth of a new day.

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