Halfway Up The Hill

October has passed but we are always halfway to somewhere...

HALFWAY UP THE HILL

A giant hawk screams warning
I whistle back
then the dog barks
then the Volkswagen
lies dead in the woods
right there
It happens that way
on Sundays
out walking with God
Then the Volkswagen
lies smashed and dead
papers scattered across the straw
windshields blasted away
And I sit
where it sits
Still as death
while my dog walks close
and sniffs and barks
And the sun warms my back
on an October Sunday
when leaves are crimson
more bright than the dead
My life is filled with symbols
and signs
like the dream of thumbs and fingers
Mimi says I need to be touched
Yes I say
Touch me
all you people
Touch me
and my heart will shatter open
like this broken windshield
so very still
so right with the world
And how in the hell did this
stolen heart of a Volkswagen
get up this hill halfway
to this place here
to be dumped lifeless
in the woods
And what's in it for me
where is the sign
what does it all mean
And where'd that hawk go?

Jeff Hartzer
copyright 1984,2011
[from: http://www.aquilaarts.com/flamingos.html]Tweet

A Hot One

We arrived alive in Albuquerque this month back in 1985...It was a dry heat then, and today's gonna be another hot one...Here is a poem I wrote in the early days of the high desert back in the student ghetto of UNM...
It is taken from my book, Flamingos.

OUR BLOCK OF THE WORLD
for Gene and Evelyn

there are days like this
when even grey skies are hot

these are the hot ones
say the gas men
the litterpickers
the meter readers

hot ones
they come like this in summer


there is a porch
on our block of the world
the block where we live
and on this porch
neighbors drop whatever they are done with
whatever they choose to leave behind
to pass on
whatever they choose

and when they leave something
on this porch
on our block of the world
it will be gone by dawn


it is rich
this block where we live
where we breathe and dance
and leave behind all the things
that were once so vital
so precious

and they are gone by dawn

© 2010
Jeff Hartzer