Robert Lietz
THE CHANGING LIGHT
See how the seasons-stiffened poplar
proves the wind’s returned for it, serving
ends agreed to their conclusion in mad fields,
from darkness to first light, sure, restoring
an order there, and finches, cardinals darting
from umbrage personalized, setting
the yard and good day up, a preview observed
through porch screens and triple glazing,
from this room, as our love’s engendered it,
receiving the changing light
the tall glass in front shares seasonally, mornings
the parlor’s all caught up, so it’s easy
to see, Elizabeth, to imagine the light’s source,
shimmering constellations, to know
what belongs, what a day like our own involves,
high twenties bright, complete
with its breakfast rites and a first look through
photographs, websites, toward
this hawk revisiting, posting for inspection, and
winging then, giving me back to pictures,
reminding space, topography, the day as it is
in how many other places, teased
by this same light, by snow the news predicted,
winds we came out for in advance,
topping the feeders off a little ahead of history,
improving the distributions, the main
event, the statewide amusements, and locals
dreading every inch of it,
raiding the grocery shelves, stacking
their pantries,
it seems, as always here,
in case.
LINGO
A week so cold teased snow seems fit to it, like
the breath by which a dream accumulates,
or a premeditated state, when slippery left no odds
for second chances, not in this lifetime anyway,
or in another century, with another child, another love,
or with your own grandkid, gazing through time
from a crib in Arkansas, and cheered by this world
he understands as family, aware as he is
a grandfather’s eased by all of it, by this north, these
weeks of Ohio winter like the old days, forecasts
topped off, and all that this new year means to him,
sparing the next and next emergencies, with
so little light and snow, to hear the locals swear by it,
substituting its own good glow among conditions.
So the recliner under him inspires, calms him some,
and a picture sent across two days of driving miles,
in seconds, in a blink, for the forgiveness and grace
in all of this, because the brightness occupies,
a rightness gleams from those blue eyes, more than
a match, he thinks, for another billionaire’s
hysterics. Why shouldn’t we trust this eighteenth year
another decade, and beyond even, in miles, pixels,
bolts, apertures, and stitches, in this kindness revived,
and this snow the winds presage, a season clearing
when they’ve finished, with errands to be about, before
the next and next bands span the wide geography,
and we get to ourselves again, to this gas fire warming
rooms the woods surround, preoccupied, we think,
by their own motion, from which this doe-eyed wonder
comes, worlds emerge, and every hunger, every word
for it, answered accordingly, gladdened, with so many
ways to say this out, sounding our own lives, no matter
how sudden the season seems, how deep, in its own
more slippery places, even as light descend, dropping
into stubble, thinned preserves, on the fragility
in places given to spare and to survive by, in a prayer
sometimes, a peace, economy, gas-fire, whatever
cold seems left, or that sufficiency chill creeps through,
however good, ignored, or welcome smart enough
makes up for, when even the lingo’s sniffling, leaving
behind its own cold cup, its secret curricula,
behind these leaves we’re sure will not reward
our breathing there, or crack
the codes to seed the steady hour’s drift
and later reading.
Robert Lietz's poems have appeared in over one hundred journals, including Colorado Review, Georgia Review, Missouri Review, and Shenandoah, and dozens of webzines. Among his eight collections are The Lindbergh Half-century and Storm Service. Lietz enjoys taking, post-processing, and printing photographs, examining the relationship between them and poems he’s exploring.