"Recognition" by Shelby Stephenson - POET OF THE MONTH JUNE, 2011

RECOGNITION 

 by Shelby Stephenson 

     I'm an ordinary man. I am with you in the shade.  I feel 

the edge of lying back against the bark and I view the shaking 

sun on the lake, the lay of the horizon. 

     My frayed feelings swell and swallow up the least 

utterance reaching out where the road and the water move 

together.  The relating debris scatters enough tiny reckonings 

to force off  aremembrance of tomorrows, the clouds of the 

brows, a meeting of blue highs, thighs, the setting sun in the 

grimace on the runner's face when she trips and falls.  What 

is an elegy but the going for the finish line that begins the race 

again? 

      The resistances come out willingly.  I was dreaming 

of getting some place and looking back and saying, "This is it," 

but no, that's just the way the cast light plays the tin roof, lays 

corners smooth as spheres or the slimber reaches of 

dissimilarity. 

      Why can't I put simple pleasures in the world, using 

ticky!tacky, an August ice!sale, say, a leaf slipping down to 

roll the dust imperceptibly, a scraggly attempt at the end of 

the road, a detour to establish a reality of things with the 

knowledge that the words I should have said long ago I have 

not said and cannot, Lord, cannot. 

     We brush and sweat, wash and wet our bloom.  

We enter that part of ourselves cast aside to drift.  There doubt 

settles.There our splendor goes unnoticed, for we are a scanty 

piece that stretches into regions where the spirit and the body 

are one and the tomatoes on the vine wait to be picked and 

eaten. I want to become a plain and let your crop grow in my 

approaches to the weather, but I cannot account for the purpose 

of the simple life I did not choose. 

      You have some idea of my revival, but I cannot tell you to 

what extent my bones ache in the curve, a jar in the arm resting

comfortably on the sofa. That you will understand is my wish,

if only for a moment when my hands lie in my lap like dried okra.

Previously published in Southern Poetry Review