Rio Paz
by L. Ward Abel
In the courtyard by the river
rain drips from awning
furled like a canopy
of aluminum and green
sugar. Lorca’s book of poetry
sweats letters on a wicker chair.
He was buried in an unmarked
grave, they say.
Would-be hawks and trucks
compete in town, a smattering
of flashes and pops—they could be
an awakening. But thinkers
get distracted. Questions
forget.
A bold day of reflection
should find a garden,
all tools replaced with pens.
But see the scops
navigate traffic, dumbasses
self-pointed,
while the beautiful city
falls. They give names
to small streams
like hurricane names,
but still the streams
are small.
The dying breed—with dying art
from more than a keyboard, a parcel
of conflict in and out of meaning
knotted like fishing nets and word
fronds and the remains of
fiddler crabs—should now
compose.
Exhume that patch
you’re standing on—
otherwise the first casualty
could be the past
because just under the peel
is something gone the way of breath.
So hide your sentences
in small corners
creases, gaps, wicker,
carefully folded
considered in a quiet place
alone, free. Always free.
We walk on porous
ground. It holds no water
but has a current of souls.
Sometimes when ferries
are closed upriver, folks get
stranded on the banks. But
others transfigure out to sea,
silent, leaving only
characters.
About the author
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in Rattle, The Reader, The Istanbul Review, Snow Jewel, The Honest Ulsterman, hundreds of others, and he is the author of two full collections and eleven chapbooks of poetry, including Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), The Rainflock Sings Again (Unsolicited Press, 2019), and his latest full collection, Floodlit (Beakful, 2019).
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