Fred Smith

I. Stephen
II. Days of June
III. About Fred

Stephen

Unlikely coral,
the neon brightness
of the birds as they swim
in the waters of blackest
thought.

Waves of the brave green
clinging, your ship is upturned,
and—insult to the perfection
of the tropical knolls breaking
against water—your ship’s a sail.

Stephen, dark-haired companion
to song’s journey into silence.

You spoke
sometimes of nothing: the delicate
thighs of your women,
unspecified birds, ergonomic
skis and other paralleled gifts.

And now you have offered your hand,
chosen to accompany
the waning persistence of your heartbeat
into the darker crescents.
You’ve sent hushed letters

to other drunks
with smoke and water,
pleaded your goodbyes
with sloppy ease and the superb
knowledge of darkness.

I cannot explain your suspended gait
to friends, members of the Blood.
Your memory collapses
onto itself, crumbles
and rebuilds, a circulatory

system remarking on
unfamiliar storm patterns.
You are a starship
among magnificent sailboats,

calling from beneath
irrelevant oceans all
inside out and cluttered
with the rich, fertile brown
of noble, breathing plankton.

A mark of salt
on the water,
only we can see,
screaming for mourning
or more morning.

Days of June

We are not homeless,
just indescribably restless, our scribbles

growing indistinct in the erased
air. Smells like gray gum,

kneaded into penciled earths.
To give is to earn, educational

moments wresting life as
we drink martinis under slow moving

clouds, the staid greenery of slow
pine blocking backyard from highway.

“Everything in our gardens,” I say to Hazel
as we watch the boys graduate,

“calls back to England.” Only
here we are much bigger,

the meanings of our foliage
not so meaningful, not the cemetery

of historical set pieces that you’d
find in a natural amphitheater crowded

with British, not Griswold or Mufarrij.
“Trued wheels on tried boys,” we say,

“Forget some of the sorrows of marriage and childbirth, a
     pendulum made of flesh,
smelling like cookies

or minor tragedy.” There is nothing more awkward,
more obvious on these strangely Buddhist boys,

than the dots like constellations subtly marking
our melted zen subtleties. “We are proud,”

if anything, “So bloody proud.”

Fred Smith lives in Bethesda, MD.