Peter Bushyeager
BALLAD
I go bold in a tapestry of intent
and pay and pay and pay.
Who has permission to narrate this outing
and who’s walking around showing teeth among the trees?
Lavish stands of purple loosestrife crowd out
wide crowns of showy goldenrod.
Bulgy clouds in a field of beautiful mistakes.
The t-shirt says “relax, the singer’s here”.
WEEK OF DREAM
We dream in our waking moments,
and walk in our sleep – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Monday. Three ambulances
roar down First Ave. followed by
an eighteen-wheeler hauling
an asphalt machine tailed by
a cop car with flashing lights.
Yesterday’s map led us to
roads that were just mire running alongside
industrial farms with heavy gray chemical soil
that held planted potatoes perfectly vertical.
Tuesday. They called it an ordinary mountain
but it unexpectedly spewed lava
edited a lake
buried a road, relocated a riverbed and
left raw products inside your
head where you’re actually
six years old trying to fall asleep
propped up high with
large square purple chenille pillows.
Acid suddenly rises in your throat
but a kid can’t diagnose
so you focus on
the rescue dog coming next week.
Wednesday. A musical replay from the past.
The basses in your college choir
overreach in the Beethoven and become
one huge scratched throat
singing about brotherhood.
No patience with the resistant pieces of
a failed collage on the card table.
Dramatic messy clots of
color from the scarlet quince bush
cornered, caged, but still flowering
against rusty chain link.
Thursday. Gather up the sated flowers like
old rolodexes that bulged and got messy.
Clear them out until the landscape is
clean green right up to your door.
These days midway between denim and linen.
Bulbs done but leaves haven’t
flopped and gone brown.
Friday. Orchids obsessed with sex.
Fragonard’s Rococo courtiers
in embroidered waistcoats and pastel petticoats
flirting on ribboned swings.
Without naming it, describe your favorite animal
and when you’re done
forget about the number of legs
the length of its snout
or the conventions of dress in this or any century.
Remember a life of fortuitous collision.
Saturday. Rerun the gray soil that
enables easy potato harvest
the dishonest road with a sideline in mud
the mountain forget the mountain remember
the rescue dog’s charming instincts.
Every night kick off the sheets
raise your legs an inch off the mattress
and tense your thighs for confidence.
Sunday. Pundits and new asphalt roads
that snake onto
retrofitted bridges that span
rivers with red muddy banks.
Against all odds the rivers run
crystal clear into the capital city on the hill.
But you still peek at the map
faultier than before
the map that led to the mire.
Peter Bushyeager’s Peter Bushyeager’s poetry has appeared in journals that include New American Writing, Local Knowledge, Hurricane Review, and Sensitive Skin; in several chapbooks and anthologies; and in Citadel Luncheonette, a full-length collection of his work. He edited Wake Me When It’s Over: Selected Poems of Bill Kushner (Talisman House), and his essay on Lewis Warsh is forthcoming in Spuyten Duyvil’s A Renaissance of Words: Forty-Four Laudable Poets.
