Poems by Bill Rector

Lizards

Lizards are my latest loss,
old news more than new,
permanent yet evanescent,
like the dashes in Dickinson.

I like similes. The little clink
made when like or as link
the unlike makes me want
to smile. The chain of being

grows. Metaphors are stronger.
Word-cells in mid-mitosis.
Green comets. A leash of lithe
neurons in the corpus callosum.

Enough about me. Lizards
love my large screened porch.
The sun-warmed deck of pine.
A view that’s wide and narrow.

 

The Bluebird Box

This morning, I emptied the bluebird box.
I’d been meaning to for a month.
Nest upon abandoned nest
had filled it to the top.
When you watch
the sun come up, and
hear the trees begin to sing,
your head fills with thoughts.
I didn’t empty the bluebird box, but
I thought about it. Not far from the house,
doves wondered in their hollow way.
Crows cawed and wheeled about,
like a trail of crumbs
taking wing.

 

The Big If

If I am granted reincarnation,
I hope my uncalloused soles
will slip easily into that pair
of Nike Air sneakers suspended

by tied laces from the power
line above the elementary
school I attended with Homer
three thousand years ago.

Rain or shine, I will keep
all twelve eyes trained
on the children racing wildly
about the playground,

until the last thread of the great
story breaks, and I reenter
the cycle of unbecoming
and becoming again.

If the wheel lifts the sodden
fabric of my being from the gutter,
I want to hop into a Google
Street View Car that swerves to

a stop beside my barefoot shade,
splashing it with darkness.
Hey, Buddy. Need a Lift?
Rebirth will follow in the Cloud.

If the gurus in throat mikes
and black t-shirts say
that feature’s not available,
wait for version 20.23,

return me, unknown power,
to the hero who shared
my soul when I was a boy,
who could spin the lariat

of the world’s latitudes
with ease, scale peaks
that made the Matterhorn
look like a dry hangnail,

and race faster than a speeding
locomotive to save Helen,
bound to the railroad tracks,
before he even tied his sneakers.