Steve Hodge

Poetry

 

 

 

hearing of the death

of her childhood abuser

silent snow

 

*

 

fracking rig against the stars

Cancer on the horizon

 

* 

 

snow-covered angel

all the pallbearers step back

except his son

 

 

 

My Lai

 

morning sun stirs the breeze

through the children's hair

 

 

 

Snow-Covered Stones

 

The night sentinel stands alone at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  Snow covers the tomb, the sentinel, the graves and drifts up the faces of the headstones, covering the names, the dates, the wars.  The snow falls straight down, covering everything.  Even the headstones beneath the trees are covered with snow.  The air smells of snow and the only sound is the soft whispers of snow falling on itself.  It drifts up the sides of the stones, connecting one to the next from stone to stone.  Rows of stones bound together by snow.  Waves of stones stream up and down the hills and even across the roads.  Everything seems to glow.

 

The snow stops.  Everything is still.

 

the midnight bell fades

the silence within

the silence

 

 

 

The Weight of Thunder

 

The storm begins to gather before dawn.  Stars are visible across the sky except in the west, where their absence portends an ominous threat.  As dawn breaks, the thunderheads show themselves; a blue-black bruise above the horizon.  Lightning flashes silently within the clouds.

 

Gonna be a big one.

 

Swallows roll and dive, catching insects one after another.  A chickadee chirps somewhere nearby.  A snake suns itself on a rock.  A copperhead.  The venom sacks full of venom behind its eyes.  Grasshoppers buzz here and there as they take flight.

 

There’ll be hell to pay.

 

The air smells of earth.  Dew shimmers on the weeds and brambles well into morning as the storm makes its way east.  Thunder rolls across the fields; distant cannon fire.  The swallows are gone, the grasshoppers silent, the snake long-since slipped off into the grass.  Waiting.

 

Better take cover.

 

The first drops of rain are large, warm, heavy.  The air becomes hot as the storm takes the sun.  Blue-white lightning flashes light the darkness.  The thunder causes the rain to fall in waves that hit so hard it’s hard to breathe.  Thunder drowns out the boy's cries.

 

There is no cover.

 

the iPad blinks off

my father’s face

in the dark

 

 

 

Steve Hodge graduated with honors from the prestigious San Francisco Art Institute in California where he studied photography with Ansel Adams, Brett Weston, Pirkle Jones and others.  His photos have shown at the Diego Rivera Gallery, the Ancient Currents Gallery and elsewhere.  His book of photographs and haiku, The Sparrow's Dream, was published in 2014.

 

Steve's haiku, senryu and haiga have appeared in a number of haiku journals, including Frogpond, the Heron's Nest, Prune Juice, A Hundred Gourds and others.  He is the administrator of the facebook haiku groups Great Lakes Haiku and Free Haiga.  Steve lives in Michigan.