Sample Poems by Bruce Guernsey
Igloo
For a door
the eye of a telescope.
Within,
the infinite galaxies of snow,
cinders for stars.
In this roundness
the dog alone
circling his spot
can sleep.
The rest of us?—
insomniacs,
searching for corners.
The only window,
a hole for fire.
The startled explorers,
their tracks
filling with snow,
seeing the smoke.
Those shadows on the wall
bending over the flame,
that flickering of hands
on the endless wall.
Listen,
their lips are moving
but not a word.
Ice Storm
To go to bed one April night,
a halo around the moon,
to sleep for hours it seems,
so soundly
you never heard the sleet—
to waken so suddenly old,
all that green gone white,
the orchard creaking,
its branches brittle as ribs—
to squint at the light with milky eyes,
the great-grandchildren gathered near,
all staring, all frightened—
to point towards the window,
someone wetting your lips—
to try to tell them
Oatmeal
In the cold kitchen
before school,
my mother spooning steam
into our bowls—
upstairs her father
waits in a bib,
his teeth like ice
in a glass by the bed.
Glass
is the wind’s half-brother,
born of Touch,
their promiscuous mother,
old, blind in her bed,
lusting for Silence,
that lover of flesh,
who took her one night
in an ecstasy of gesture,
like what I see
when the wind invisibly
tosses the branches
outside my window,
cold and silent.