Bob McAfee

 

 

Moon Glimpsed through Hemlocks

The moon is a small child playing in the forest,
a midnight game of hide and seek.
I catch a glimpse of his bare skin
interleaved with branches, looking

as I am from an upstairs window
of the deserted mansion in my dream.
The child is being scolded by the wind
or by a long dead foster parent

reminding me that I once ran naked
through the green groves in those years.
I sit on the edge of old age,
crepe-skinned voyeur locked

in a flannel memory, yearning
to run naked through the hemlocks.
A pebble is tossed against the window.
I have the urge to press my nose

against the glass and see my hot breath
forming clouds across the sky, the expanse
between the summer warmth of childhood
and the loneliness of winter coming on.

 

Neanderthal Pauses

Crossing Central Park, elusive in the shadowland,
time traveler of the darkest side, Caliban,
who rules the earth for a time, brute
of the narrow days, hulking hirsute

biped bending at the blue fountain, observant
angel in the days of rage, servant
to a butterfly evanescing o’er the canyon
homeland of the hairless ape, the towers of cro-magnon.

Target of the winnowing spear, the devil dart
has rimmed him through his loathsome heart.
Agony gaze, the furrowed brow ridge fraught
with pain, he hunkers down and drowns in thought.

The ape-men gather round the corpse, the Irish cop
his whistle blows, gesticulations stop.
The homeboys leave for home, forsake the crowds,
assume the body in a body bag among the clouds.

 

---