Space
So this is where we have landed,
this gray quiet in every other
afternoon where for one hour
skin slips as easily into silence
as it once slipped from grace,
where between duties to a son
and a family we sit and read
together like old bookends
turned inward, where in this
brief hollow with your bare feet
wrapped in a wool sweater
and settled onto my lap
like kittens, my hand on your leg,
we tell ourselves without speaking
that in these moments spiced
with a cup of hot mint tea,
others who have more
rarely have this much.
Acknowledgment: Previously published in Eclectic Literary Forum (1996).
Talk About Luck
Here’s one for you: a December night
forty-three years ago, and five friends
sit like stiffs in a two room apartment
in front of a black and white TV,
each of us with a bottle of Brown Derby
in our hands, determined to see who
will run out of luck when New York
Representative Alexander Pirnie
reaches into a jar and grabs the first
of three hundred and sixty-six capsules
big enough to choke a man. This happens
the year the Stones let it bleed, the Mets
win the Series, and the Selective Service
decides in one night which young men
will be free to quit school and take a job,
or apply to grad school, or plan a family;
which others will live in Limbo
for a year, and which ones will risk
killing or dying in a country as far
and foreign as the other side of the moon.
This is the year Danny McAllister’s
birthday is drawn ninth, and he says,
“Fuck, I’m going to die,” and no one
speaks or contradicts him. The year
I refuse to take my eyes from the screen
until the two-hundred and seventy-fifth
date is drawn, and I am home free
to catch the look on his face as he starts
to leave and Willie Le Blanc offers
soberly to do a favor and break
Danny’s knee with a crackback block,
free also that night to realize how
the grasp of a man three thousand
miles away picked who would likely live
and who would roll the dice,
and how bingo luck had favored me—
so that next year when my birth date
will be drawn first and Danny has
disappeared forever, nothing
will seem as arbitrarily sweet as that
December night, or linger in my mouth
for years with an after taste so bitter.
Acknowledgment: Previously published in Lily (2012).
I Find a River When I Need To Pray
I find a river when I need to pray,
when I need the solace of riffling light;
a river will take what you have to say
and enfold it, like a leaf within the sway
of ripples lilting towards a gray twilight.
I find a river when I need to pray
and only the burbling, swashing way
water overruns stone can set grief right.
A river will hear what you have to say
at times like that and let the glinting play
of sun and underswirl fill your sight.
I find a river when I need to pray
for the assurance that people, lives stay
with you even as they drift beyond sight.
A river will listen to what you say
in that hour and lull your fear away
within the glimmer of its shifting light.
I find a river when I need to pray;
a river will receive what you came to say.
Acknowledgment: Previously published in Sand Hill Review (2007).
George Lober is the author of two books of poetry Shift of Light and A Bridge to There. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and e-zines, including the former Eclectic Literary Forum; MiPoesias; Lily; Sage; Quarry West; Sand Hill Review; Porter Gulch Review, and Monterey Poetry Review. He is a former winner of the Ruth Cable Memorial Prize for Poetry and currently lives in Monterey, California.
So this is where we have landed,
this gray quiet in every other
afternoon where for one hour
skin slips as easily into silence
as it once slipped from grace,
where between duties to a son
and a family we sit and read
together like old bookends
turned inward, where in this
brief hollow with your bare feet
wrapped in a wool sweater
and settled onto my lap
like kittens, my hand on your leg,
we tell ourselves without speaking
that in these moments spiced
with a cup of hot mint tea,
others who have more
rarely have this much.
Acknowledgment: Previously published in Eclectic Literary Forum (1996).
Talk About Luck
Here’s one for you: a December night
forty-three years ago, and five friends
sit like stiffs in a two room apartment
in front of a black and white TV,
each of us with a bottle of Brown Derby
in our hands, determined to see who
will run out of luck when New York
Representative Alexander Pirnie
reaches into a jar and grabs the first
of three hundred and sixty-six capsules
big enough to choke a man. This happens
the year the Stones let it bleed, the Mets
win the Series, and the Selective Service
decides in one night which young men
will be free to quit school and take a job,
or apply to grad school, or plan a family;
which others will live in Limbo
for a year, and which ones will risk
killing or dying in a country as far
and foreign as the other side of the moon.
This is the year Danny McAllister’s
birthday is drawn ninth, and he says,
“Fuck, I’m going to die,” and no one
speaks or contradicts him. The year
I refuse to take my eyes from the screen
until the two-hundred and seventy-fifth
date is drawn, and I am home free
to catch the look on his face as he starts
to leave and Willie Le Blanc offers
soberly to do a favor and break
Danny’s knee with a crackback block,
free also that night to realize how
the grasp of a man three thousand
miles away picked who would likely live
and who would roll the dice,
and how bingo luck had favored me—
so that next year when my birth date
will be drawn first and Danny has
disappeared forever, nothing
will seem as arbitrarily sweet as that
December night, or linger in my mouth
for years with an after taste so bitter.
Acknowledgment: Previously published in Lily (2012).
I Find a River When I Need To Pray
I find a river when I need to pray,
when I need the solace of riffling light;
a river will take what you have to say
and enfold it, like a leaf within the sway
of ripples lilting towards a gray twilight.
I find a river when I need to pray
and only the burbling, swashing way
water overruns stone can set grief right.
A river will hear what you have to say
at times like that and let the glinting play
of sun and underswirl fill your sight.
I find a river when I need to pray
for the assurance that people, lives stay
with you even as they drift beyond sight.
A river will listen to what you say
in that hour and lull your fear away
within the glimmer of its shifting light.
I find a river when I need to pray;
a river will receive what you came to say.
Acknowledgment: Previously published in Sand Hill Review (2007).
George Lober is the author of two books of poetry Shift of Light and A Bridge to There. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and e-zines, including the former Eclectic Literary Forum; MiPoesias; Lily; Sage; Quarry West; Sand Hill Review; Porter Gulch Review, and Monterey Poetry Review. He is a former winner of the Ruth Cable Memorial Prize for Poetry and currently lives in Monterey, California.