Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Mid-Winter Road Trip



Although the overnight weather report
showed that the coming cold front would stay
up in Colorado for another day

the thin film of snow that drifted
across the streets of Amarillo
told us that Flagstaff was out of the question

So we headed down toward Roswell
hoping for Las Cruces
then onto state route seventy

watching the rain freeze on the road
slowing a little more after every roadside wreck
but still going on

till out on a wide expanse of plain
at a place where a pickup truck was overturned
next to a smashed up Honda

someone else
the highway patrol
had to tell us it was time to stop

had to tell us that some days
there just is no way
to keep on heading west







© 2015 Frank Kearns


Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Ghost Stories


The close sun of Los Angeles
is hard on ghosts
you won’t find them as you might
lurking deep in redwood forests
or soaring on the wind
in the high sky of Mojave

In the light we tell our stories
cheerfully with bits of lunch
           at noisy restaurant tables
standing in chance market meetings
or bravely in fluorescent
          story-telling classes

The ghosts prefer to hide and wait for dark
to float down moon-lit river channels
tiptoe among the black palm tree silhouettes
echo back the words they hear
          in corners of dim living rooms
collect the things that we have hidden deep
and then explode us from our deepest sleep





© 2015 Frank Kearns