From Yesterday he comes, from Far
Mountains only Time lets go of. Under
wings steady as scissors a thermal
gathers, not sure the joy is ours,
or his. It flings him a David-stone

racing the Time-catch at heart,
at our throats. There is so much
light falling down from him,
from wing capture, we feel
prostrate. To look in his eye

would bring back volcano, fire
in the sky, a view of the Earth
Earth has not seen yet. In apt
darkness chasing him, in the
mountains where gorge

and river give up daylight
with deep regret, his shadow
hangs itself forever, the evening
hawk sliding mute as a mountain
climber at his work,

leaving in our path the next
hiker’s quick silence, stunned breath,
the look upward on a frozen
eye and a driftless wing
caught forever.

Faces old Barns Have

The motley barn,
like an old stain
gone haywire,

is a dread easel.
Knots, carved into walls
like old promises,

wait for campfires
or late hearths, warmth
from Earth’s beginning.

Only the darkness
is inconclusive where
night points its finger.

In the deep aches knots
have fallen from,
stars fall in, fields

of them, with the evening
leader digging deepest,
digging first after

yesterday’s carcass
linking still in the eyes’
behavior. Shadows,

upstaging any moon,
argue on its surfaces
laterally. I have seen

more mandates than dreams
in the dim recesses
where wood envies time,

chases after it a whole
age of transparent death;
just sunken cedars

in the swamp, drowned
black, live on longer,
scaled at new livelihood.

Against a thousand storms
this barn has stood,
never folding inward,

only down by faint degrees
of ant strokes, termite man-
dibles, the odd carpenter;

its shoulders going sideways,
knees turning softly,
its breath slow and halting.

Streetlight

This one is familiar as sneakers,
an old wallet your hip knows,
a belt you lean against all day.

It lit my brother’s way home
from vast unPacific waters.
It still calls at our doorstep.

If you touch it, parts touch back.
It crosses your heart without
promise being sworn upon.

It stops. It starts. It fades when
morning takes on nourishment
and weaves a maple out of webs.

I’ve seen my father read by its lamp
as winter leaped its fat frog on us
and they had to shut off the lights

because he preferred bread and meat
on the table more than light across it.
Once, a man with a mustache stitched

on his upper lip like a single chevron,
questioned the preference. Father showed
him the light in no uncertain terms.

Shadows come to life here,
throw a darkness with extraordinary
reach through window panes

and fall a summer snow
on soft mounds of my children
as if moons have gone underground.

When red maple leaves go like pigeon
feathers tossed at October sun
or get thrown like pajamas at dawn,

bones hammer themselves
into orbit of the light pole’s
reach. How fast light travels

down the crude mass of bark.
How quickly it makes shadow
before shadow knows it’s thrown.

All Poetry By Tom Sheehan