Where All These Things Go
The northeast seeps while Jupiter, she,
arcs overhead in no hurry to reach
the west.
And that west, yes, pulls a line
of roots all flooded out now
wet as broken grapes
turned to wine, our ways and means
given way to decline, huddled circling
bonfires, walls made of shadows
all dispersed under a domed sky stunted
by Indian winter, humbled with a sense
of where all these things go.
The Coming War
She says, “There’s a brimming
in this world tonight. It speaks
from a thousand places—though
joining into
one fever.”
Then she pushes a book aside
and opens draperies fronting
the east-windows
to see Shiloh coming
in the clouds.
The weather stares us down
never blinks, like we are tumblers
filled with smoke
in the gaze of a different god
than we’ve known.
Only present tense
survives all the severed ones
and it bristles in the remaking
always arriving
nowhere.
I ask, “What are we waiting for
both here at the not-quite
and there at the never point
of always returning forever
slowing to a moving stop
leaving in a hurry?”
Big flashes portend a loss of order
as we view a single pane of sky
in a much larger window
made of deep fields
and stars
all at the ready.
As we both brace for white-heat
to push us back on our heels
she holds my hand without touching
and says, “A sideways glance and
we’re gone. I told you
this would happen.”
*
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Worcester Review, Riverbed Review, Honest Ulsterman, Main Street Rag, Skylight 47, others), including two nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and he is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (Erbacce-Press, 2016), and his latest collection, Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). He is a retired lawyer and teacher of literature, and he composes and plays music (Abel and Rawls). Abel resides in rural Georgia.
New Critique 