Michael Brockley
Reading the Books of Extinction in an Outpost
on Old National Road While Awaiting the Next Plague
on Old National Road While Awaiting the Next Plague
For N. B
I hide behind the thick walls that shelter us from seasons that alternate between arid heat and havoc storms. The dust from this month’s sirocco drifts midway up the outer doors, but the escape hatches on the roof are usually free of debris. All I have left to read are the last jaguar’s memoir and the biographies of fireflies, the trilogy with the quote about the creator’s inordinate fondness for beetles at the beginning of every volume. I quit believing in thunder gods and the patron saint of the impossible after the death of the last bee. On those rare evenings when I remind my grandchildren of how bluejays and redwing blackbirds quarreled over the sunflower seeds they ate, they doubt my reminisces. The youngest no longer believe in flowers. In seeds. Or animals that flew. “What is blue?” they ask while chewing on their hair. My mother once celebrated the return of spring by asking the saints of her faith to intercede for blessings on her behalf. Spring arrived so that the Earth could heal itself. Saints were holy men and women who wore crowns of yellow light above their heads. What use did we ever have then for a patron saint of unattractive people? Or a patron saint of passwords? When the wind abates, I recite my own litany, asking forgiveness from elephants and butterflies. From the night fireflies of my youth, the lightning bugs that did not eat during their adulthood. The next time I teach my grandchildren about feasting, they will worry that I have succumbed to an isolate’s dementia. “Sugar?” they will ask. “Comfort food? What were you grateful for at Thanksgiving?”
Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Thieving Magpie, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and The Twin Bill. Poems are forthcoming in Flying Island, Scissortail Quarterly, and the Indianapolis Anthology.
I hide behind the thick walls that shelter us from seasons that alternate between arid heat and havoc storms. The dust from this month’s sirocco drifts midway up the outer doors, but the escape hatches on the roof are usually free of debris. All I have left to read are the last jaguar’s memoir and the biographies of fireflies, the trilogy with the quote about the creator’s inordinate fondness for beetles at the beginning of every volume. I quit believing in thunder gods and the patron saint of the impossible after the death of the last bee. On those rare evenings when I remind my grandchildren of how bluejays and redwing blackbirds quarreled over the sunflower seeds they ate, they doubt my reminisces. The youngest no longer believe in flowers. In seeds. Or animals that flew. “What is blue?” they ask while chewing on their hair. My mother once celebrated the return of spring by asking the saints of her faith to intercede for blessings on her behalf. Spring arrived so that the Earth could heal itself. Saints were holy men and women who wore crowns of yellow light above their heads. What use did we ever have then for a patron saint of unattractive people? Or a patron saint of passwords? When the wind abates, I recite my own litany, asking forgiveness from elephants and butterflies. From the night fireflies of my youth, the lightning bugs that did not eat during their adulthood. The next time I teach my grandchildren about feasting, they will worry that I have succumbed to an isolate’s dementia. “Sugar?” they will ask. “Comfort food? What were you grateful for at Thanksgiving?”
Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Thieving Magpie, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and The Twin Bill. Poems are forthcoming in Flying Island, Scissortail Quarterly, and the Indianapolis Anthology.