David Beebe

Each


Piece by piece, brick by brick,
I feel the last light of my true nature
disappearing with each day.

Each trial and tribulation, each news report,
each howling sin. Each long day of labor,
turning my thoughts of escapism into someone
I no longer recognize, someone whose very
soul once motored on with each written page,
sensual daydream, lust for nature and a woman’s
thighs, the simple flutter of bird’s wings.
I feel as if the game is over and no one told me.
The field is dark and everyone has gone home.

There are handwritten notes in the book
of poems I found in a used bookstore.
“Better rhythm,” one says.
A complaint about extended metaphor on another.
Little stars in the corners of pages, passages
underlined with no clear motive.

I’m grateful the notes become fewer
as the book goes on, the last annotation
less legible as the one before, as if
its author fell asleep or maybe woke up.

David Beebe

Lake Haskell


I cast into low-hanging sun, the line sparkling
gold and lying slack across the surface in the first
of three inlets, the rock edge rising steep from the
water like snowbanks. A pug-faced boy sells perch
and crappie from a white construction bucket slung
over his shoulder with a yellow piece of rope. He says
the secret is raw bacon and sits on the edge of the rock
face to watch his callused feet dangle over the side.
He talks with his back to me.

Clouds gather in the west for a moment and
a southern wind adds a chill, making little sense
for June in Muskogee County. I peek over my shoulder
to see if the boy is looking, but he still addresses himself,
so I reel in my three-hook rubber worm named
Bass Stopper for reasons I’ll never comprehend.

The second inlet has offered more success in the past.
Bluegill and small bass have easily been fooled on more
than one occasion, though not often enough to brag.
The middle inlet is more lively than the first – snakes
swim into my shadow and bolt deep into the lake and
blue herons jab at frogs and minnows where the lily
pads begin. I’ve watched largemouth, ignoring all
shiny and feathered ornaments tied by clinch knot,
sunbathe in the shallow of this fingered inlet – rolling,
white bellies shining, a single fin surfacing as if to wave
better luck next time.

A dusty two-track weaves around hickory and oak
patches and hugs the shoreline, connecting the three inlets
like a traced hand as white lotus lilies fold in the blue hue
of early evening. A straightness of least terns glide above
the third inlet like salt swept from a tabletop.

Lightning flashes in its cloudy belly
where the gray pages overlap and
I can see it on the water.

David Beebe

Scene from Joe Pool


I stray from the fire when the conversation
becomes predictable and wander to the cold
sandy beach of a small lake west of Dallas.
Tall, red blinking towers waltz in the fog, a muted
tune I’ve yet to put my finger on, and the water
reflects their dialogue undisturbed as planes
turn into position against the overcast backdrop.
I return to the night she sat behind the wheel,
changing into a small yellow concert t-shirt,
the blinking theater lights in the mirror.
She does this without trying to be revealing,
and we both pretend I’m not watching –
one shirt over the other, wrangling out of the
old for the new. I envy the one who asks for
directions, seeing it all for the first time.

David Beebe

Creek


A small creek bends with the road, twin dancer
jukebox sway. Poplars on the bank lean in to listen,
others peer around the corner for the train.

There’s a search for smooth flat stones,
asking Jesus for an arrowhead, or better yet,
Sitting Bull on his painted horse, bending down
to hand me a stone teardrop before he whispers
to the horse Christ shall return when the buffalo do
as man and beast go scuttling into dust and sunlight.

Small rocks knock together in my pocket,
church bells as I run the water’s edge.
Dad whips his arm, commanding the creek
to ripple, and I simulate his movements,
heaving my small body, sandstone spinning
like flying saucers on late night tv.

My father’s rough hands, the white poplar
bark peeling – wallpaper to rooms undiscovered.

The stone I lost track of –
twenty years later, still skipping.

David Beebe

Nick


His dad gave us keys to the Oldsmobile in the field,
said to turn on the heater if we got cold. Earlier, Nick’s
grandmother took us swimming, a small lake surrounded by
pines, and we walked down the boat landing to the water,
barefoot in the dirt, and sunk our feet, shaking them clean
inside depth charges, minnows for submarines.

I asked if this was still camping and he shrugged,
dashboard green glow on his face. They didn’t have a tent anyway.

In the backseat I stared at the sagging ceiling where stars
should’ve been, pictured our church up the road, less
than a mile – the playground my dad had built, the view
from his office, the big stone at the bottom of the grassy
slope, the one I thought angels rolled from Christ’s tomb.
I wiped a circle in the window’s condensation and, across
the field in the dark, a TV flickered from a double-wide.

I woke Nick early morning, before first light when the hours
don’t exist, and showed him the raccoon fumbling an empty
soup can next to the car. Nick turned the key and rolled
the windows down, cold air pouring in. We rested our chins
on our arms. The headlights pointed out cows far into the field,
their emerald eyes glinting like dew in moonlight.

David Beebe

Sketches of Garland


I cannot remember the last time I held a pencil,
firm in my hand like a Kennedy at the podium,
lead whisking above the page as I attempt a
lonesome farmhouse on the prairie. The pencil
shades in long shadows from the edge of the house,
creeping along sandy shortgrass and curly mesquite.
I try to depict a herd of wind turbines on the distant
horizon, an impending suggestion, but they look silly
and I scrub them out, leaving trace ghost lines of
hereafter, brushing the eraser crumbs onto the desk
with the back of my hand like dead autumn skin.
I imagine the late sun warming the house cat
perched in the window, eyes closed, cold nose
pressed against the screen. I do not draw the cat,
but it is there.

David Beebe

Harbinger


This morning I should be elsewhere.
I’d prefer a walk through the Kiamichi Mountains,
listening to melancholic mourning doves
above the whisper of ancient pine wind.
I should be waist deep in the Mountain Fork River,
sending the line back and forth with fluid
exaltation as a litter of freshly spotted fawns
observe with great interest downstream.

Instead I stand in the driveway as blackbirds
form a circle, startled from their leafless tree,
passing overhead with the sound of a soft wavelet.
I pray these small, wordless moments are able
to fix me.

A friend tells me his life is now filled with joy
and I struggle to understand the word as if
straining to hear the remaining rustle of a
dead language, the last sunlight dust of the romantics.

David Beebe

Deathbed


Her cancer returned by Thanksgiving,
worse than before, and her family began
the process of saying goodbye. A week
before she died she left the hospital
for the arms of her prairie home –
its wild blueberry bushes, endless sky,
her sacred dogs, and memory of horses.
She was made comfortable, no pain
I am told, in the house she raised
two boys with her husband of forty years,
her deathbed the old bedroom
of her firstborn, who pines for levity
wherever it may be found.
Why not his brother’s room? he asks,
with its two corner windows framing
golden fields and robin’s egg blue, but
like most things the answer is not known
nor explored, though I consider the room’s
closeness to the front door, for when
the time came for her to leave, only
the dogs would see her go.

David Beebe

Corinthians


Love is a lazy river.
Love is a tight pair of jeans.
Love is the passing of a cool canteen
in the shade of a breezy willow tree.
Love is one cigarette lighting another.

Love is in tell-tale signs, last call, or a thunderstorm in autumn.
Love is a crack inching its way across the windshield.
Love is North Dakota, seen through the bedroom window of a beautiful girl.

Love is a parent choosing their child over God.
Love is the epilogue.

David Beebe

Weather Report


Fifty-three at daybreak,
the river meandering to its big cousin,
Michigami.

Time passes slowly, I say
as the last four years feel like
a cold decade of doubt, anger,
and lonesomeness.

In honor of the mighty Masquigon,
I start the morning with a cold shower,
baptized once again in glacial render,
the spark needed to wake purer,
more genuine.

Oh, how I love to beat the sun
and its harlequin pageantry.

Pink and blue and orange clouds
rising like once dormant volcanoes.

I’m drunk on the idea
I’ll be someone new tomorrow.