Alexander Etheridge: 2 poems

Dream of Two Memories

Think back to the tree-huddle,
dad was there and the cicadas sounded like 
rust.  The elm light was watery.

Flatland rail-line
blueish at dark and leading out
to a dark earth.  Earth also recalls.  

Remember that handful of
luminous yellows
in a late April 
storm.
You waited at the foot of the mind's ladder.


❃

Sound of the sparrow flocks
echoing,
and a blue gloomy cloud-cover.

You're eight and you stumble through cloudfall.
Years later lined up at the
empty pulpit,
you brought the wrong key  
and a black thread was spun.

Night after night, a rush of 
smoke ‒‒ that entire life is gone.
Gone is the first thing you remember.

Certain Faith

Furnace light or stained light 

or the moments after a Chopin nocturne 
in flying minors . . . a continuum’s 
held breath. 
Even our faithless make a constant prayer, 
like distant notes, 
and the vast spaces between them. 
We believe in a fabric of numbers, 
but at sundown we kneel and  
bow our heads‒‒ 
It’s the ways we’re brought through pitilessness. 
We don’t reach very far, 
but something in us is like those high, 
empty choir lofts 
and dusky stained glass . . .  
Our praise 

is a muteness. 

---

_{Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998.  His poems have been featured in Wilderness House Literary Review, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, and many others.  He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999.}