By Terry Jude Miller on March 6, 2022
Terry Jude Miller: Four Poems
Selected by Alexis Rhone Fancher, Poetry Editor
Come and Go the Grackle
I am distracted by a grackle
clothed in iridescent shades of midnight,
secreted on a thin live oak branch.
I pause mid-stride to study him
studying me on the walking trail.
His eyes consider me in the mathematics
of bird logic, computing if I equate,
in some fashion, to a handful of sunflower seeds.
Unlike me, he does not recall his brother’s death.
His thoughts do not resonate with freshly poured grief.
I turn to see our mingled shadows behind me.
In the illusion of light and darkness,
he appears to be emerging from my head.
Before I can turn around, the bird launches his escape.
He snatches a scrap of me in his talons as he goes.
*
My Brother’s Workshop
Before he died,
my brother installed
a motion sensor
in his workshop.
Fluorescent light
spills over his tools
and worktables
when I enter.
His framing hammer,
handle worn by his
calloused grip,
naps silently beside
a roof-less bird house
he was building
for a granddaughter.
Mud-caked field boots in the corner
ache to walk his garden,
a sharpened shovel starves
for the taste of unturned earth.
Spiders weaved a hammock
of gossamer over the stopped
clock above the doorway.
I cannot find
what I was looking for,
so I pull the door
to an un-oiled close
as I exit. The lights inside
enter sleep.
*
Beauty in the Dust
dear brother, the world cracks open
and pours into the silent black mouth
of space, all that we poured into her,
the anger we spat into the air,
the sorrow we slipped between
blankets of mud, and
the excommunications we rolled
into the seas
all that traveled in fiery course
to the skirts of earth’s gravity
is free to roam the universe
once more, to carry the tear-drenched
kerchief of our weakness and strength
to the arms of some new world
where the smallest parts of us
are given chance again
to find meaning in the sunrise
and beauty in the dusk
*
Sunday Sail
wind, have your way with us
guide our sails in our blue sojourn
take us to where worry is renounced
and the sun, our only watcher
*
To purchase THE DRAWN CAT’S DREAM by Terry Jude Miller
Author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Terry Jude Miller is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet from Houston, Texas. The recipient of a plethora of poetry awards including the 2018 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize, the Maxwell Prize, and the Inez Grimes Award, the Georgia Poetry Society 2018 Langston Hughes Award, a Juried Poet for the 2011 & 2012 Houston Poetry Festivals and winner of the Global Peace Poem competition of the 2012 Tyler Peace Festival, his work has been published in the Southern Poetry Anthology and in scores of other publications including anthologies of the Austin International Poetry Festival and the Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival, the Texas Poetry Calendar, Harbinger Asylum, Postcard Poems and Prose Magazine, Everyday Poets, the University of Houston's Bayou Review, Ancient Paths, Orbis, Stepping Stones Magazine, Furnace Review, Shine Journal, Blue Skies Poetry, Survivor's Review, Live Oak Review, Lamplighter Review, Bijou Poetry Review, Chaffey Review, Foundling Review, Houston Literary Review, Boston Literary Magazine, the Edison Literary Review, and the Birmingham Arts Journal. Miller's books of poetry, are titled: "The Day I Killed Superman", "What If I Find Only Moonlight?", and "The Butterfly Canonical" and can be purchased at barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com. He is a member of the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of Texas, the Gulf Coast Poets Society, and Poets Northwest (Houston). He is the creator of the Texas Poets Podcast. Terry is a retired professor of eMarketing and held an Innovation Fellowship at Kaplan University.
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