From… The Shapes the Hours Assume
1 *There are, as it turns out, immeasurably many ways to make of the shapes the hours assume a presence that though it can’t be seen is felt with a force that makes even sitting in the shade or beneath an arch of stars as much as any living soul could need to build a reason for waiting for and easing into what cannot, no matter what kind of effort is made or distraction built, be kept forever at bay.
2 *It can be suggested by wind, for instance, arising in the midst of a calm afternoon, or a particular thickness of stars, the long and various shadows of an early spring day after a week of rain, or there could be no natural provocation, at least not one that could be observed, just a switching of the gravities in cells or the whispers of what believers regard as spirits or gods giving direction to one who is unpleasantly lost; nothing one could pin a motive or origin on, just the way it happens when one is blessed or cursed.
3 *I dreamed of this, and then here I was inside the dream, and it was a kind of impossibility realized in the form of a shack made of rough-cut lumber and a wood stove drawing in the long, steady breath of fire, the communication of birds, and the wind making the sound of the sea high in the pines, and a jet farther above, on the way to elsewhere.
4 *Let us remind ourselves, at least occasionally, that we are of the least worth when we believe we are of the most worth, and let us, therefore, make it clear, at least to ourselves, that what will certainly befall the many will befall any and all among them the same whether any of them had a plan or purpose or not.
7 *I wouldn’t expect you, if there were a you, to know what might lead us to a place where you and I could sit at a table in a booth at a nearly defunct diner and chat for a while over cooling coffee about what will likely, sooner than we might like to admit, bring us to the place where all conversations end in the middle of a life sentence.
Mike Cole lives in the mountains of California near Yosemite National Park. He taught high school English and Spanish for 30-plus years. Over a long and sporadic publication history, his poems have appeared in such magazines as Antioch Review, Laurel Review, Stirring, Red Savina Review and others, and in the anthology Highway 99 (Heyday)