Thom Garzone

from the Kingfisher archive

Pondering Aimee

I fell asleep dreaming of Aimee

fantasizing I was in love,

harmonizing a frail depth of dawn,

its enigmatic answer

I wondered while sleeping

counting the sheep of other colors,

in the playground of my mind

remembering my bizarre glimpses of madness

I awoke thinking of Aimee

recalling I haven’t had a companion

since the nineties,

a sharp void within my sexual confusion,

my lost days and decades I’ve squandered

like a greedy merchant in markets of time

I made breakfast visualizing Aimee

in my grilled eggs and sausage

reflecting from the plates and silverware,

recollecting echoes when we saw Twelfth Night;

hence, to greet this grave soul

only with a redemption for passion

I wished I had made love to Aimee

thinking, dreaming, feeling her limbs

entwined with mine, my soul joined with hers

linked forever by some uncanny irony

from the Kingfisher archive

Solo Trek in June

A highway opens, barren, free, but useful

Time inherits me, Idaho’s son

driving east on I-84

listening only to the silence of my soul

watching desert’s bugs splatter against my windshield

I pass one town where once taking refuge

it had towered upon a delivered height,

and I recall when it led to crags braced before

an earthly yet heavenly domain

Below me, the meandering Snake River

follows my brain with its release

Horses, mules, bulls, goats, and the

landscape that flows with crops

moors me to its power

Nature brings me to my destination

as I slow down for towns & their low speed limits

till then I find the oasis sunken

in a wondrous glow of horizon’s end I seek

from the Kingfisher archive

The Yard and the Myth

Thoughts and memories of softball fields, feeling as high as

a nine or ten-year old could feel kids weave

in and out, en mass

all confused by religion

wondering about the universe

waiting to find love

Your yard played with paradise ever-changing

field of fantasy, crowded with strange faces who had orange

or straight black, oily hair, raspy voices, neighbors but distant in urban borders

As two boys we still resonate in my senses

who’d hang upside down from trees letting blood rush to our heads

scraped & scuffed up at the knees as though medals of honor

or lost in the hours we’d squander on the Catholic school parking lot

Hints of your family dynamic existed long before we officially met

I had known of your blended Irish blood, and the Brennans from the schoolyard

Your sister often chased me over your moist lawn, and under mid-Atlantic

rain, you and I questioned when the Cubs would win the World Series

and hoped the Yanks would be next

Our introduction was like taking a course, Friendship 101,

you, a consummate professor of trust, unbroken in bonds, while I based

my future narratives on the remembrances of the avenues we played upon

Years later I’d see you in a dream puzzled & recalling

‘71 or ‘72 when we’d hide below the foundation of your house

in the stealth shaft, smelling of the structure’s stale underbelly

restricted only by the images out of our own breath

we dreamed aloud sharing secrets like trading baseball cards

telling tall tales, childhood fables, inhaling the putrescent

dust beneath Bradley Avenue

So there lies the question of where had you vanished to

after moving to Virginia Had you become a farmer or

miner, laboring all day long with both our images in your mind?

Can you recollect my mother’s savory chocolate chip cookies

and her baking that melted on your palate many a time?

Truth be told, every lie I spewed never matched yours,

not my delusions, nor fiction I may admit my creations

harbored in those fibs of boyhood that nurtured me as a storyteller

who often rambles with dreamy myths born from reality

Have you procreated an army of Irish children

all crimson-haired with freckles and buck teeth?

Did you ever try out for shortstop on the Yankees or joined the

Navy like you had wanted? Or had it only been a dream?