Sunday, July 7, 2019





Turning
~ for Patrick


It was the elegant way his hair swelled from his temples,
fell to frame the broad rock of his forehead, the way

his teeth clamped on a cigar, there at the lathe while curls
of rosewood dropped to the floor, helpless and fragrant,

black cinders of ebony flew up and speckled his beard, and
those goggles he wore, the imprints they left above his ears.

            Strangeness I could sink into like a long bath.

It was the click of his old house’s black iron latches,
twist of the narrow stairs that disclosed the upstairs

as a country apart from the rooms below. And it
was the dark third floor landing under the eaves,

with its dank, sprung love seat, the busy desperation
of squirrels trapped between the floorboards. It was

when he asked me to stay for breakfast -- overdone
scrambles, toast, on a chipped plate. I sipped black

coffee while, from the roof, a whippoorwill turned
its mad song like a wheel, circling, almost shouting.



Copyright Cathy Larson Sky (poem first appeared in Pinesong, North Carolina Poetry Society Awards, 2019) Photo of Patrick by Cathy Larson Sky. Whipporwill by eBird.