Embedded Files
bull runs
a chorus-minded flock rowdy
rolling groundswell breaks
on both sides of beautiful lulls—
water through it all
in irresistible surges.
lightning sears the starscape
but won’t scathe us—
a reassuring echo of close-held
strobe-lit dancing
in the bull runs of youth.
frogs swell after reconsidering.
their conductor rotates
and everything rotates.
up come bubbles
from a bullfrog boom ruckus.
pocket-nooked crickets persuade
the unsheltered to nestle closer in
while ocean scale movements rip
along the quays.
slender tree frogs stilled
by an eye that wanders over—
when the eye comes back
moments later aren’t there—
webbed toes retract
beneath lily pads
and goldfish startle.
if again there are bull runs
you’ll see me sweeping
whole armfuls of chips
from the table.
the moon rose seven times tonight
butternut skinned in daylight’s remnant
behind pastured knolls escaping the Pacific
she unwrapped gossamer blankets—
fresh and unsubdued.
vanishing soon after in the recent dark
she gave back the night until her tooth
tore through a gumline of glowtipped totara
filaments silhouetted before her complete
self-blanketing conjured the milky rest
of a cataract lens.
next through banksia and kōwhai
higher up the hillside, regolith’s throne
goth sauntered through thickening whips
and hedgehog cones, sparse bright-lit
bone canopies.
that trilogy, a precursor to four
cloud-heralded arrivals, new curtains,
new lights for the celebrity backstage
donning whiter gowns, cinching whalebone
between ovations, scrubbed polished
then stripped bare for spotlit encore—
driftwood bright.
each reoccluding enough to wonder if
all would slump below grim folds, drizzling
in the muffled territory of local clouds.
she teased the darkness—
before raining moonfire down.
wait wait, my wife flourished out of sight:
I’ll do it again but more glamorous—
her ivory shawl billows back into view.
the first sharing did not fall short but,
let’s indulge in arriving seven times
to the rolling butterwarm blush
of turning points in the sense that
we could be turning around and around
not lost but twirling.
Nathaniel Calhoun works to protect and restore biodiversity around the Amazon basin and in his home country, Aotearoa New Zealand. His poems have featured or will soon feature in Oxford Poetry, New York Quarterly, Lana Turner, Poetry Aotearoa and many others. He is a reader for Only Poems and sometimes tweets @calhounpoems.
Copyright © 2024 by Nathaniel Calhoun, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author
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