Found One...

facebookhomepro
   filefriendsinbox
                  gregoryaskewsetting
                  slogoutsearchapoem!

Child's Song w/ Photography by Lizz Swenson

Child's Song

I lie in my bed thinking of you,
just two doors down.

You!
So small,
so new to this world.
You are alone in your dreams,
no warmth
but your own.

By my side your father, my lover snores.
Faraway he roams
from you,
faraway he roams
from me...
this stranger at my side!

While he sleeps,
I am fitfully aware, awake...
with thoughts of you,
just two doors down.

I could go to you, now.
Throw back the covers without a sound.
Take you up into my arms, tell you that I am here
for you.
But, I hesitate... something closes in me.
And I wait silently, impatiently for understanding.
Who has time for this? One-o-clock,
tick-tock, tick-tock
and
then suddenly something flies open
and now I see!
That I am the one alone,
there is no one
but me.

By my side your father, my lover snores.
Faraway, he roams
from you,
faraway he roams
from me.
Who is this stranger by my side sleeping?

Shhhhhhhhhhh.

I drank from the river.

Now the rush of its course

is all I hear.

Florian: Two lovers meet on a bridge, but tragedy rises from the water.

The Gorge: A Poem by Gregory Askew

The Gorge

I know the place where they found you
Not the exact spot, of course
But the general area,
Set between foothills of the mountains to the east:
The chill wood gorge
Where in spring
Rock walls of slate weep tendrils of moss
Through the residues of the winter’s spoils,
The peat-brown mud that renders treacherous
the inclines and moldering surfaces along the trail
Where the brooklet song of the wren
Tumbles over gnarled roots and stone
Past salamanders curled beneath logs sodden with rot

Edging an inverted pine precipitously
and on to the river below
Bird vying for an ear
over the susurrus of eddies and chutes
Did you hear him?

Where in summers past reckless bathers,
Harried to the hills by the city’s heat,
courted a fate same as yours
In the deep narrows where the waters pitch and bend

Where now, I imagine, those waters have since calmed,
The rains having been mild the past weeks,
And the fallen leaves of oak and fir softening the earth
Absorbed the sounds of red squirrel sprinting tree to tree
And the violence of the man who took your life.