BACKYARDS
A bird flies across the yard,
then flies back, cawing.
A golden leaf
flutters from its tree.
A car horn harmonizes
with a subwoofer beat.
A green lizard creeps along
the hammock line toward me.
My cat yawns at my draft stanzas.
Sirens call a distant warning.
Patterns emerge in the random,
twisting branches above me:
a question mark,
an arrow, a cross,
an X, a Y, a U,
the S of a sentence,
or a snake…
A little boy
in a drier land
scampers off to jihad.
His young mother
walks a tightrope
by day, by night
cries quietly,
holding close her tears,
rocking slowly
to sleep, dreaming
of street dogs
lapping up the blood
running freely in the streets.
Zealotry knows no solitude,
she thinks…
A mosquito nuzzles my ear
whispering wantonness.
A twig drops into my lap,
like a damn exclamation point.
The sun skirts through
pleats in a passing cloud.
LITTLE RIPPLES, LITTLE BOAT
I cringe in awe before your subtleties
encroaching almost imperceptively,
lurching about in a drifting fog
over a gray, disconnected sea.
Little ripples tap out strange codes
against gnarled gunwales, unvarnished now,
but still holding true to their purpose.
Strange codes in strange surroundings
to which I hold no key. Only a sense, a feeling,
a shadow, it seems, is all I can muster.
Is there something there in the corner of my eye?
Did I miss some clarifying detail?
Or is this just another shifting shadow
in a sea of shifting shadows?
Gray mouse dashing along the baseboards,
think not of the cheese, but of the trap!
Little boat, where are you taking me?
Richard T. Rauch was born and raised in the New Orleans area, he lives along Bayou Lacombe in southeast Louisiana. A graduate of LSU, he received his PhD in theoretical physics from Stony Brook University. He has lived and worked in New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and currently test rockets at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. Poetry credits include Big Muddy, Brushfire Literature and Arts Journal, The Cape Rock, Confrontation, Crack the Spine, decomP, Edison Literary Review, Euphony, Grey Sparrow, Neologism Poetry Journal, The Oxford American, Pembroke Magazine, Plainsongs, Quiddity, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Whimperbang, Wild Violet, the Love Notes anthology (Vagabondage Press), and Down to the Dark River: An Anthology of Contemporary Poems about the Mississippi River (Louisiana Literature Press). Flash fiction credits include Infective Ink and Aspen Idea (2012 Aspen Writers’ Foundation/Esquire Short, Short Fiction Contest finalist).
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