Two Poems by P.T. Tyx

by P.T. Tyx

Grace Perched on His Arm
(for Judy and her son, Dan. 1997.)

Why have they come to him, these white doves of peace?
To be sure, he feels their scratch of birds’ feet seeking balance on his wrist and trouser leg,
Yet, see how his hand flattens to accept them,
This tousled-haired boy,
Big-eared and stripe-shirted.
See his solemn smile and gentle, down-turned eyes.
The white doves flap their wings and alight on him,
Grace perched on his arm.

They would not do so for me,

But I do not bang the kitchen door
Or bully my little sister
Or complain loudly about having peas again for supper.
I do not chase the ducks into the pond
Or climb over the neighbor’s fence.
Why was this boy chosen for this rapture of natural elegance on the curb of a schoolyard?
I would flutter like a bird myself at such a moment of beauty,
But it happens for him serenely, easily, like a new day dawning
Or like Jesus, rising from the water,
Baptized and exulted within the Spirit of God.
There he sits on a day like any other, an unkempt boy, beauty in his lap and
Grace perched on his arm.

 

Remembrance
(for Janet. 1996.)

All nearness pauses.
All stillness breathes vagrant dreams of the past.
(This is remembrance.)
The milky moon emerges from behind a black veil of clouds, blessing the night with brief sacred vision.
(Again-remembrance.)
Our days pass like harp-voiced wind, which etches rock.
We, who have shared time, waft and wiggle our way.
We romp and rehearse, ramble or remain until
Our memories embrace in this chase of lingering life.
Sweetly, now and then, we turn from our present duties
To sing lullabies to the souls who helped tether our youth
With ropes of companionship, even as our sails caught the breeze.

In the time to come, in our ripening age,
We shall swim more often in this dark ocean,
Joining in the currents of what has been and what we have meant to the other.
Each shall recall when green fields were worn as slippers and
Notes of urgent love were impishly jotted on the margins of our prepared texts.
We keep with us the sudden bounties which encircled our youth,
When laughter speared our need for improvement
Or a sharpening freedom carved new direction in our sense of who we might be.
Certain muscular moments maintain a strength of importance.
These stories of ourselves helped us fight our inner dragons
And endure the prowling of that lazy lion, Life.
We preserve such moments as when community curved us into a circle,
Allowing us to shut a door on our isolation and widen the roads to our hearts.

With you and you and you, and you, and especially you,
And those of you who are now but fleeting thoughts,
And even those of you whose faces now escape my recollection,
You who I have teased and tickled,
You who I have made late and troubled with my questions,
And you who have wandered, wounded, or wondered;
Even as we lose each other, we are yet bound,
And in this binding, find the eternity of us all.

All nearness pauses.
When the sun winters in my eyes,
I remember what is past retrieval.
You speak to me then with the heart’s hidden echo
And we moon-brighten our souls in this deepest of magic-
Remembrance.

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P.T. Tyx lives in Greenville, Ohio.

Cover photo credit Brian Robert Marshall, 2014.
In-post photo credit Peter Daems, 2009.