Wednesday 5 November 2014

3 Poems by Matt Larrimore

A Conjuring of Light

plays along the mist
of the overcast summer evening,
golds, blues, and grays
reveal the rutted, furrowed underside
of cloud cover that stretches
horizon
to horizon
curtaining valley and peaks.

The evening breeze
evokes the scent of rain
as people in the crowded
parking lot look up to watch
the breath taking
end-of-day light show in the sky.

For one moment
the cars, plastic bags,
and shopping carts disappear
as the audience is mesmerized. 

Camera phones appear,
pics are taken
never to be seen again.
The spell is broken.


Cat Watching

It seemed an age as we watched the tiger
put a bystander under his claws,
like a scene from the Coliseum,
sending Christians running for exits.
A single shot severed the spinal cord.

The celeb-utantes were the first from the scene
They never get dead no matter their age.
Looked and leered upon, they bring their goons
for show and tell, bang and batter each other.
Many are moonstruck by their beauty.

Their hair silvers like moonlight.
All the greats vie for the key to their images.
They blanch at the thought of age gone by.

At the end of the age they look
for hell’s dark sun, glittering like a jar
of jam, a poisoned dagger poised to drop.

The Skydome, nothing more or less
than a tent, I watched as its age ended,
imagining  spectators running from the blue
lumps of ice that came crashing like satin sheets
of glass dropping to the field below.



[“Cat Watching” previously published in Aproposthearts.com, January 2012]

Florissant

Out of crystalline arching skies crowded with gathering cumulus clouds, the wind blows over this high ancient ground. It flows in waves down the mottled green heaving hills of Florissant. Pressing through the ruddy brown ponderosas, it carries the soft sweet scent of pine. Over the high prairie, once an ancient lake, it bobs the golden yellow crowned white heads of simple mountain flowers. It whirls above the fifteen feet of ashen flow that buries redwoods of stone preserved from time untold to time un-guessed. It whispers something in my ear. Something, I do not understand about finding a place in the world.

[“Florissant” previously published in The Crucible, April 2010]

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