Clayton Medeiros's Shared Poems

The evening sky longs for the moon
Still at rest beyond the horizon
Not yet ready for starlight
Not yet ready for adulation
Of its silver luminescence
So beloved by romantics
Canidae’s dark howls
Hunters quiet night wings
Travelers need of a path
In the quiescent forest
The sun forever in search
Of its reflected light

Your heart’s a clinched fist,
Forever undiscovered,
Unknown to cartographers,
Impenetrable to mirrors.
Baffled explorer’s turn to
Other hearts for treasure,
No matter how tenuous,
No matter how unlikely,
For hope is a necessity.

If clear eyed, wide awake people
Put on a fully accessorized
Costume to begin each morning,
What should be said to a compliment,
Even though unsolicited, other than
The fact that they put on display
A fully assembled ensemble.
Perhaps they would enjoy
A certain, appreciative delivery,
A small, thoughtful smile
Or, given the state of the world,
We should just be mature,
Walk demurely through the day,
Very, very quietly.

I grew up with bird feeders, brimming
With gray and black sunflower seeds,
Chunky peanut butter for jaunty squirrels,
Suet for birds who hung on wire holders.
Aunt Fran loved back yard flora and fauna
Including her three year old nephew, invited
To live along with her younger sister, Bernadette,
With Uncle Eddie in East Hartford Connecticut,
In a Cape Cod house built after the war;
Welcoming back soldiers and sailors with
Unfinished attics and three foot crawl spaces
For consummate handymen’s skills
Brought to bear with upstairs bedrooms,
Basement workshops with shelves for
Canning the taste of summer in jars.
Perhaps I am the child Fran never had,
A possibility never considered likely
Until this memory of birds and squirrels,
Raising robins who fell from the nest.
Fran wanted her sister Charlotte
To join this familial mix, escape from
Eddie Wlodyka, the Polish narcissist,
In a continuous line from his father on
And on to the old country, where Poland’s
Endless decline was someone else’s fault.
He worked in the ship yards during the war
And wasted away of asbestosis in his mid 70s.
But Charlotte’s escape was into half gallons
Of red Gallo wine on the top shelf of
The refrigerator ready all day every day.

The sun keeps it own time
Does not rush or dawdle
Across desultory city skies
Tawdry suburban skies
Dusty desert skies

Misses Pharaoh’s worship
Misses the ancient Greeks
And their golden chariots
Misses its own light
Reflected by a Goddess