TheRealIssue

Issue#2, June 2004

Poems

By Sam Matteson
Physics
University of North Texas

The Accident
(12/10/2003)

The Deacon John Mahoney took to drink
About three year ago and none got wise
Until the night his car near’ felled an oak.

‘Set a blaze that burned all night. The tree lived:
Hollow, scarred, green up top, but black inside.
“Hypocrite tree” we’d joke behind our hands.

The truth will out, and pity him who’s caught
With secrets sunk too deep for ready grace,
Seeking rather anesthetic solace.

Truth be known, there’s more his grieving widow—
If right it is to call her such who had
Too much and fled, last May, with kids, to ”Mom’s”—

There’s more she could have known he suffered through
Silent: Another night; another car;
Another city, darker. A gunshot

Wounded thief, quite dead, dead by John’s own hand.
He ran, kept mute but then looked back always
And burned inside a slow fire of stifled

Worry, vague remorse, ignored old shame gone
Half forgot, buried out of sight he thought,
Until he ran upon his sin one night

Again quite by accident…

Floral Alms
(11/02/2003)

I plant cut daisies white and yellow mums
Inside the brass—or is it bronze?—inlaid
Vase that juts up proud from your granite slab.

I called as soon as life and will allowed
Me come, more often now than once I came.
This plot of ground, your final real estate

Grows green at last with thick St. Augustine.
Rock-pillowed apartment bed, curb lining
Grass-muffled streets fenced from the playground kids,

The railroad tracks, the empty woods beyond.
Sunday afternoon of peace and regret.
I clutch the blossoms tight behind my back

To hide then ‘til the final moment comes
Just like the time I stole into the house
To make you sneeze with goldenrod bouquet.

They will not last, I know, the next big frost.
But, still, their color paints my eye and heart
With sweet smells and bright Crayola mem’ries.

Oh, why am I here, telling you, whose ears
Are stopped, distracted so with other songs?
Your life’s all told in hyphenated years,

Etched in cold granite read but by us few?
To whom shall I offer these floral alms?
They’re not for you, but for the thought of you:

A wordless keening I will fling against
God’s chest or toward His brazen skies, at least.
With blooms, I protest the natural order—

Loss and death and pain are too dear a price
Paid for brief joys of love and beauty known,
Like flowers cut and planted in a stone.

Copyright 2004 Sam Matteson. Used by permission..