evening on the marsh
evening on the marsh is quiet save for cicadas’
arching whine in the hedge rows
and red-winged blackbirds scolding in the pussy willows
the water is flat and bass sometimes take a dragonfly
walking across the water
in the farm a mile away lights on tall poles comes on
showing the marsh rocking deep in its belly
but not the people warm in Bridey’s Café
hoping the coffee is hot and the dog is in
This Amber Sunstream
There is something in the smallest thing
That will not let life be a thing like other things
Some passing thought or ache
you saying something I couldn’t catch—
Maybe something about the rain
And puddles on the road
Or love upwelling in your heart
Like this amber sunstream filling the room
Through glass and curtain leaving us
Drowning in golden motes of color
The thought you began gone like the sheen
Of water on your eyes
As last light falls from the Sycamore
A dark V on the fading horizon
Leaving silence and a portion of the dark
And the word you began that I did not hear
But feel like the promise of rain
for sale
the stone walk from house to barn
goes around the frozen pond
where fox cubs nurse beneath a dry well
flowers bloom there now on a broken trellis
the noise of farming is gone
and the ducks lifted into their
winter flyways years ago
and a grandmother died in the big room
where bougainvillea brushes the window
the place is for sale but voices may come and go
says the man from town/ his hat pushed up/
his clipboard ready with phrases
“and at night when the moon sits in your window
and your hands touch beneath winter covers
you are free to listen or not as sleep takes you there
in your attic room your icy breath hanging blue over the bed…”
he takes off his hat and holds it like a Bible
he has others about crops and the corn wagon
frozen in its ruts
he would buy the place himself he says
“damned if I wouldn’t” he says . . .
Professor Emeritus at California Lutheran University, J.T. Ledbetter is the author of four books of poetry: Plum Creek Odyssey (Valparaiso University Press, 1975), Blue Galaxy Iris (Vanguard Press, 2007), Underlying Premises (Lewis Clark Press, 2010), and most recently, Old and Lost Rivers (Lost Horse Press, 2012), winner of the Idaho Prize for poetry. He’s also published six chapbooks of poems, a volume of literary criticism and essays, as well as two plays. His poems appear in many journals, including Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and The Sewanee Review. His creative output extends to a musical stage play, several choral anthems, as well as published collage work.