Poems by Jeffrey Side

WHERE YOUR LOVE BELONGED

I’m sitting here thinking
of a time I could have been
love-friend to her
about life

Pretty girl facing me
from the corner of a room
forward stretching over it
my bridges burnt

She said never leave me
as if I ever could
that was just something
in her mind

There were good days
and there were bad days
but the sun shone brightly
and the sky was blue


PRECIOUS REQUESTS

It was a Sunday morning.
And all the bells were ringing.
I work my fingers to the bone for you.

I want to buy you something new.
You can’t have that many things,
even if I say so myself.

There’s plenty of time, and there’s work to do.
What you hear in the dark,
always repeat in the light.

There’s no gold or silver for your belt anymore.

I shall never forget these things.
Your mother knew about them.
Let your light shine on these special gifts here.

Don’t keep your treasures all that near.
You can’t take them with you too.
Your father knows you need them all.

Is there someone asleep in the doorway?
My legs won’t keep me up:
not in the house we stand in.

Your precious requests have not gone unnoticed.


THE CROSSING OF THE BRIDGE

Dimness is here
followed by regiments
recoiling from containment
armour in Europe
remembering fire-eaters
absorbing what was put down
with great trouble along the bridge
while the rain saturates everything
the enslaved more furiously
throughout fictions and incredulity.

I remember my friends on dry roads
and wagons coated in perfume
memories on the ferryboat
love that is the distance
and the eternal clock
democracy and earthquakes
and women for all the troubadours
shuddering hearts and brains
that heat this world
and rulers furnished by other arts
when I was alone in Charleston.