{"id":2822,"date":"2021-12-27T10:51:14","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T18:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=2822"},"modified":"2024-11-27T08:43:30","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T16:43:30","slug":"four-poems-by-bruce-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/four-poems-by-bruce-bond\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Poems by Bruce Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"84-cover-for-web-lower-res-1\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Found in\u00a0Willow Springs 84<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Author Profile<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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Five Poems by Bruce Bond<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

THE LOST LANGUAGE #11<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you are searching for a friend online,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

an insomniac to break the bread<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of misery and silence, look no farther.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trust me<\/em>, says anonymous, the voice <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

in rivers after dark is no illusion.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is an angel. And who can resist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I am broken just enough, I fly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suspend my physical heart, alive,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

among the saints and champion banners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never met an angel, but I saw one<\/p>\n\n\n\n

once in a painting, in one hand poppies,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the other a harp, and though it made no music,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

it seemed so finely strung in the fire<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of a child’s hair, it nearly played itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NARCISSUS IN THE UNDERWORLD #9<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It’s not all bad. Hell has its comforts,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

threnodies, charms in the shapes of cups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But imagine what it takes to make<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a life’s work there, with only your powers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of invention to sustain you. Think of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the focus it takes to complete the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do not envy a creator that devoted,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

divided, but here I am, on the edge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of the river. A lighter craft will carry you, <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

says the boatman, because I am that light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I take his reasoning on faith. After all,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

his Italian is so lovely, and the world so<\/p>\n\n\n\n

full of weightless things, here a boat,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

there a fly drinking from the open eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NARCISSUS IN THE UNDERWORLD #26<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The creak of boats in swells of the harbor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sounds a warning like hinges of a forest<\/p>\n\n\n\n

or failed estate. So difficult to get<\/p>\n\n\n\n

news from news, history from history,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by which I mean writing and the written<\/p>\n\n\n\n

off. The auguries of smoke and wind<\/p>\n\n\n\n

blow dust from the glass of eyes that sting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earth keeps spinning the storm surge north,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and mountains sink, and refugees come,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and foreign words for home in the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a shoreline breaks, it breaks open,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and in flow the pixels too small to see,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

stars of neither cruelty nor grace, but<\/p>\n\n\n\n

a sorrow so deep its name has not arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NARCISSUS IN THE UNDERWORLD #28<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When a high wind tears down the power<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and it’s you and me and the emptiness<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that gives us license to move, we do not move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We gather our cats in the pantry, we listen,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

we hear in heaven the enormous sigh<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of an iron lung exhaling, the storm eye<\/p>\n\n\n\n

passing, the terrible burden coming to rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One part of every wind is trembling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other the stillness the trembling moves aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future, as we know it, is never true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never false. It is here in the quiet turn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of every breath, the little death a singer breathes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One part of each departure is a mirror,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the other the wall to which a mirror turns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NARCISSUS IN THE UNDERWORLD #29<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Panoptes, the god with a hundred eyes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

became a captive of the prison that bore<\/p>\n\n\n\n

his name, the circle with guards in the center<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and inmates on all sides who saw no one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that dark out there, and the hundred<\/p>\n\n\n\n

fears to take a hundred points of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why else does a man grow so many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Misery, we know, is too much company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or too little. No one sees you, or no<\/p>\n\n\n\n

one appears. When I see a prisoner in hell,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see those eyes. I see a flock of grackles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They break into the shrapnel of applause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, nothing. I am alone. Just me<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and a hundred sorrows. None of them mine.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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