Poems by Jake Berry

THE ART OF VANISHING

I sleep
I dream
I carry the deathbed
a little further down the road

The art of vanishing is so easy
we barely notice the effort

The young woman at the plough
throws seed on the ground
and walks away

She spits and the rain comes

We can never recover
from this disaster

But when I turn in my sleep
the myth is reborn
with a new cast of characters

and I notice
the road winds
through a stand of elm
and dove song rises
from its depths


SLIPPING OUT

If I came upon the Real
like a snake in the grass,
his tongue forking the air for proof

would the spring trees shudder
like an old soldier
come awake in the roots

to see a man
so utterly shattered
by a taste of the Divine?

Could the serpent and I
have the same thing in mind
as the cold ground thawed

remembering
despite our dreams in the deep
that sleep is not the thing after all?


The Watchers

We know them for who they are
through the names and plumage,
feel their eyes,
half aware of their presence on our flesh
as we attend our grubby chores
helplessly grounded
while they perch in the high places
or circle so far aloft
we squint to discern their shapes

Vastly more ancient than ourselves
we cannot name their origin
even when we reduce every detail
to our most meticulous descriptions and measurements
Nor do we understand the nature
of their disappearance
as if they had never been there at all,
nothing more than some mythic revelry
woven out of dreams and desire

Whatever name we give them
Owl, hawk, or crow
we know them for who they are
and whose purposes they serve