Behind the White Wood Home

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Dedicated to Nikolai Klyuev as he prays in bed beside Sergei Yesenin

The orange grove blossoms and their leaves lick mist

In Florida.  The boys sleep open lipped

In cotton T-shirts after mother kissed

Them into dreams which sometimes then have slipped

To nightmares of Atlantic tidal wave

That rears itself up, salt of death implied,

Or sometimes cottonmouth presents their grave

In Freudian detection.  One boy’s glide

In air round the honey house and home

Fulfills da Vinci’s engineering dream

By lifting young male limbs so they can roam

No effort needed in the sunlight’s stream.

  Below him rust on barrel has no chance

    To join limbs in their boyish naptime’s dance.

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© Phillip Whidden