HARBINGERS
1
Three suns appeared in the sky. Statues sweated freely.
The baby refused to crawl no matter how much we threatened.
2
The trees and boulders seemed lost in thought. At
the critical moment, the hunter’s rifle jammed. He smiled. The sight was so
unfamiliar that I saw it as something else, a long, crooked border with hell.
3
There’s time enough to panic when crows gather in
the dark, only a few at first, then by the dozens, while a boy and his little
sister play quietly on the floor with their father’s loaded gun.
4
Silence had been put on trial. Nobody, least of
all us, expected the jury of assassins to return a just verdict.
5
I woke up in a house made of words. A deer was
standing in the doorway, and then it wasn’t. What do I do now? I asked myself.
I went looking for it. Heat and decay were everywhere. Tell everybody you know
there’s a man trapped in the dark.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY
New Paltz, is the author of the new poetry collection, Dreaming in Red, from Right Hand Pointing. All proceeds from the
sale of the book go to a crisis center, which you can read about here: https://sites.google.com/site/
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