Two Poems
by Josh Mahler
And the Light Revealed
Memory is dangerous if left unattended—
the corner of my eye
defining a silhouette, a sinister shape.
I flinch at the caw from the crow
perched on the edge of the building.
I quicken my pace, aware of symbols.
The crunching beneath my body
simply acorns falling
from leafless branches, the single seeds
now confetti rustling in the wind.
Nothing else strange that day,
except the cracked curb that clipped
my right shoe. The gash where the toe
would be my failure to observe
the obvious, and choose a different way.
After I leave for the night,
I drive home and cook dinner,
lie in bed and read a book of poems—
words arranged for my mind
to ask, Where does an echo end?
The Way It Is
She sits on the couch in the family room.
She is crocheting a new blanket.
The dog at her feet
whimpers in sleep. The window reveals
a much too confident squirrel
scurrying across
the banister of the weather-worn deck.
She pretends not to notice.
He stifles a laugh
as both his mother and the dog,
now alert to a familiar smell,
take in the movement.
The pendulum click
of the clock hanging above the fireplace
is all that is left
to hear this Sunday morning.
After he died
she wanted him to visit
more and more. It is not that
she missed him so much, more feared
the certainty of the silent house
and the inevitability
of what the dog already knew
and what we take a lifetime to learn.
Josh Mahler lives and writes in Virginia. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Quarter After Eight, South Dakota Review, The Louisville Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Potomac Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology, from Texas Review Press, and elsewhere.