Tom Sheehan

Poetry

 

 

At Hogues Point Road

        

I walked perfect night

down a sandy Hogues Point road,

caught between snoring

and lovers at midnight call,

waiting for the fish to wake.

 

I felt heat of stars

and sand’s softened abrasives,

the mad interplay

of elements thrusting at

moccasin thickness, keen eyes.

 

Ahead, the moon pushed

light’s blade through trees' perfection,

leaves scattered delight,

a late moth struggled towards

infinity's far edges.

 

I drank my warm beer,

remembering a starfish

caught just hours before

on a burst of rocks, its five

fingers seeking sweet solace,

 

and momentary

salvation for my senses.

I knew I had no

enemies, I had no hate.

I moved out, into, alone

 

with the grace of stars,

these emery wheels of sand,

the sudden recall

of what is rough and ready

may be the smoothest of all.

 

 

 

Do Not Forget Those Left Behind

 

Do not forget those left behind,

machine gun blasted, roadside mine,

fusillades not seen, heard aloud,

falling from the darkest cloud;

do not forget those left behind. 

 

Friendly fire one day came weird

as though a drunk observer steered

hurried salvos' heart-felt blast,

ripped those standing there harassed,

arms and legs from battles cleared.

 

Nameless soldier maimed by shock,

fragments deeply cut their stock,

one who wandered, arms wide split,

showing fragments two times hit,

two times damaged breathing's clock.

 

I found him short, no longer known,

pain's passage gone past the bone,

no frown, no message sent my way;

he had no mind, no clear display,

his long future framed in stone,

 

halfway home, likely dying.

I saw his last breath flying,

no way survive this frenzied fire,

no way could Hell let him aspire

or escape his mother's crying.

 

Downhill thus he was carted,

one hand shaken, and departed,

Aboard a ship in hammock's toss

swung the fear of one face lost,

no more steps at drums allotted.

 

Who goes with him, shares a stall,

who survived last heaven's call,

who with boney arms exposed,

hero fallen, unopposed,

finds his niche in heroes' hall?

 

Just the meekest of the flock

hurler of last village rock,

who legendary stood his ground,

whose last call his comrades found

vigilant, last vigil's hawk.

 

Upon the mount, near heaven's bar;

he left his name loud heard afar

and turned about in safest place

so once more I spied his face,

set beside a brighter star,

 

clean reflection, prism's glow,

drummers drumming rhythm's row.

I'll take him where bugles call,

hold his hand so I'll not fall;

it's due and done, heroes know.

 

Somewhere still on lonely hill,

lonely soul casts off a chill

likely found in Arctic's floe

or ground fraught with heavy snow,

searching one face the void to fill,

 

one comrade from last command

holding out the firmest hand,

eons waiting likely grip

or password from likely lip,

to form ranks where comrades stand.

 

See now in poem's heavy load

how they march on misty road,

unforgotten now in ranks,

once more solid on their flanks,

last parade in peaceful mode,

 

arm in arm, abreast the dead,

far beyond the flying lead,

know their kinship ever be

joined where we can never see ...

those left behind, those gone ahead.

 

 

 

Your Walk into Sunset

         

It is brittle now, the remembering, how we drove you east with your backpack like a totem in the rear seat, so that you could walk westerly across the continent’s spine, across the sum of all the provinces, through places you had been before, and we had been, and the Cree and the Owlcreek bear and wolves envisioned when night screams upwind the way stars loose their valid phantoms.

 

Now it seems the ready truth that juxtaposition is just a matter of indifference, because we have all been where we are going, into selves, shadows, odd shining, all those places the mind occupies, or the heart, or a lung at exercise. You had already passed places you would come into when we knew your hailing us down, thumb a pennant, face a roadside flag halting our pell-mell island rush.

 

To go westerly, to walk across the world’s arching top, you said you had to go east, to know Atlantic salt, kelp girding rocks at anchor, clams sucking the earth down, to be at ritual with Europe’s ocean itself, that mindless sea of lonely buoy bells arguing their whereabouts in the miseries of fog, singular as canyon coyote.

 

We promised you holy water at Tormentine, reaching place of The Maritimes, a fist ready for Two-Boat Irish Islanders, Cavendish’s soft sand, holy trough of journey, wetting place, publican’s house of the first order, drinks hale and dark and well met and Atlantic ripe as if everything the bog’s known the drink has.

 

It’s more apparent now, after you moved outbound, or inward on the continent, trailing yourself, dreams, through wild Nations once ringing one another, your journey’s endless. Nine years at it, horizons loose on eternity, trails blind-ending in a destiny of canyons too deep to be heard, and your mail comes scattered like echoes, horseshoes clanging against stakes in twilight campgrounds, not often enough or soon enough or long enough, only soft where your hand touches hide, hair, heart caught out on the trail, wire-snipped, hungry, heavy on the skewers you rack out of young spruce.

 

Out of jail, divinity school, bayonet battalion, icehouse but only in winters, asking Atlantic blessing for your march into darkness, light, we freed you into flight. You have passed yourself as we have, heading out to go back, up to go down, away from home just to get home. Are you this way even now, windward, wayward, free as the falcon on the mystery of a thermal, passing through yourself?

 

You go where the elk has been, noble Blackfoot of the Canadas, beaver endless in palatial gnawing, all that has gone before your great assault, coincident, harmonic, knowing that matter does not lose out, cannot be destroyed, but lingers for your touching in one form or another, at cave mouth, closet canyon, perhaps now only falling as sound beneath stars you count as friends and confidants. Why is your mail ferocious years apart in arrival? You manage hotels, prepare salads, set great roasts for their timing, publish a book on mushrooms just to fill your pack anew and walk on again, alone, over Canada’s high backbone, to the islands’ ocean, the blue font you might never be blessed in. Nine years at it! Like Troy counting downward to itself: immense, imponderable, but there.

 

A year now since your last card, Plains-high, August, a new book started, but no topic said, one hand cast in spruce you cut with the other hand, your dog swallowed by a mountain, one night of loving as a missionary under the Pole Star and canvas by a forgotten road coming from nowhere.

 

We wonder, my friend, if you are still walking, if you breathe, if you touch the Pacific will Atlantic ritual be remembered as we remember it: high-salted air rich as sin, wind-driven like the final broom, gulls at havoc, at sea a ship threatening disappearance, above it all a buoy bell begging to be heard, and our eyes on the back of your head.

 

That other landfall

     on Equator's quick needle

          bamboo's vast jungle

 

 

 

Tom Sheehan served in 31st Infantry, Korea 1951. His books include: Epic Cures; Brief Cases, Short Spans; Collection of Friends; From the Quickening; The Saugus Book; Ah, Devon Unbowed; Reflections from Vinegar Hill; This Rare Earth & Other Flights. eBooks include Korean Echoes (nominated for a Distinguished Military Award), The Westering, (an eBook nominated for National Book Award). Other works have appeared in DM, Rosebud, La Joie Magazine, KYSO Flash, Soundings East, Vermont Literary Review, Literary Orphans, Indiana Voice Journal, Provo Canyon Review, Nazar Look, Eastlit, Green Silk Journal, The Path, Faith-Hope-Fiction, etc. He has 28 Pushcart nominations. In the Garden of Long Shadows and The Nations (Native American fiction collection), were recently published by Pocol Press with solid reviews (see Serving House Journal.) Now in the Pocol production cycle and due for 2015 publishing are Where Skies Grow Wide, Cross Trails, Between Mountain and River and The Cowboys, the last five titles from Pocol Press are all western short story collections. In addition, a new collection, Sons of Guns, Inc. was just released as a surprise birthday present (print and eBook) by Nazar Look Books in Romania (where he was awarded The Nazar Look Short Story Award for 2014.)

 

Tom is also the author of The Harry Krisman Mysteries ~ Murder at the Forum, Death of a Lottery Foe, Death by Punishment, and An Accountable Death ~ from Hammer & Anvil Books.