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

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.

David Beebe

Dear Sister


Sometimes I drive past the blue house
with its ashen roof and white trim, note
the collected changes of a decade –
gone the bushes at the end of the cracked
driveway, gone the redbud popcorn bloom of spring.
There’s a small garden in the backyard
where the above ground pool used to bring
the family together, and the wide oak, sick
with canker and BB pellets, no longer leans
heavy into the porch, lending shade to those
unforgiving summer evenings.

I see you, bouncing room to room as if we
were too poor for doors, your hair electrocuted,
the bottom of my outstretched t-shirt scraping
the carpet. I see the home movies where you
played all the parts. I see our first dog, scarred
by coyotes – still her tail thumps the floor.

The old neighborhood is a horseshoe in
the wandering lens of a cold satellite,
a postcard with a watermark so fine
you don’t have to hold it to the light.

The door is locked, but all our ghosts still haunt inside.

David Beebe

Painting of a morning


I used to lay in the dark with this wild idea
that great celestial beings stood guard at the
corners of my room, shrouded in ten-thousand
unblinking eyes and milk-white fire, deputized
by Christ to keep Satan and his supporters from
scratching at the window and pulling my card.
I would ask God to look after me and those I loved
and those I didn’t understand, and if I couldn’t sleep,
be it youthful regret or the shadowed chimera at
the foot of the bed, I would open a gospel and
thumb for red letters. Now I close my eyes and
breathe deeply, picture myself in Northern California
fishing the Sierra Nevadas with Dad and all the dogs
we ever had. I picture sitting at the dinner table with
Mom and my sister, laughing as the record skips,
our feet in the cool sand watching boiler steam
from the Ludington ferry stretch clear to Wisconsin
as if tethered to the purview. I search both sand dune
and marram grass for new angles to old ideas,
the answer high in rafters, with the sweet, painful
reminder that all roads end – mine a thinning two-track
weaving in and out, past valleys and over hillsides before
tapering off into row after row of eastern white pine.
And with it comes the night, and the dark we all
succumb to. Then I dream.

David Beebe

Daylight savings time


I fell from the treehouse
as the adults talked in the kitchen.
I stared up at the tree that betrayed me,
past the leaves and branches at the moon
in early evening, nestled close like a piece
of fruit, wondering if the tree would let
the moon tumble too.

Sitting here now I smell sweet redbud
on the tail end of a western prairie fire,
rows of Bradford pear looking like winter
now more than three months ago. A county
burn ban keeps us from collecting kindling
and raking sanguine coals, over and over again.

A mourning dove rests at the edge
of the roof as I start to shiver in the shade –
the shadow swallowing the new grass of the
courtyard. Her song asks for warmer days
and spring showers and I tell her the rain
will keep coming till the rain gets it right.