WHAT'S NEEDED - POEM MOVIE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOVF8iSxfbw

CHANNELLING

CHANNELLING

Late into the night,
toward morning,
my aging father is channelling
ghosts - get in the car
son - take down those old
family photos - put them
in the car - they'll be waiting
for us - I've got to drive to Austin.
He fumbles in his pocket
for the keys he no longer has.

His words come alive
out of the past as if there were
a future for them, imminent.
Son - get in the car - we've
got to go.

Fathers and sons - what does
pass between them,
unseen, unacknowledged?

He looks at me then
from across the room,
from a distance I've never
seen before, or even
considered.

I turn off the light,
close his door, get
in his car and head west
toward Texas,
dawn following me the whole way.

©Laurence Holden, 2013

DEATH, AT NIGHT

               

                DEATH, AT NIGHT

                It is the long thing
                with fingers and a mouth
                swallowing the moment
                and all the light there is.

                A dreamless ocean
                shallowing at its edge -
                a marsh, an inlet,
                in late fall or early winter
                when the weather changes.

                The night,
                long, but afterwards,
                like my neighbor Annie,
                who after the death of her husband
                of fifty years, the next day
                swept clean the porch
                and set out pots of flowers
                along its edge - geraniums
                to meet a broad and silenced day.

                An abandoned shore
                of arrival and departure,
                the slack tide washing and washing,
                the beach swept clean
                reaching and reaching
                beyond the reach
                of ever seeing.