Becoming Vane
Star has landed on the roof.
Gravity will hold
until it’s strong enough
to face the wind,
point out directions,
take a lightning strike, bullet even,
slowest
of slow turns
to rust.
Flying Objects
Air is filled with them.
It’s like the sun is a giant hive.
Someone up there doesn’t like empty.
Birds and planes aren’t enough.
Clouds never did matter.
If they did, it would rain down money. Look,
a man is leaving his lawn.
He is well over the hibiscus.
It’s the most daring thing he’s ever done.
His wife is blowing him kisses.
The kisses have wings. He walks out on one.
Stands on his head on one.
LOOKING OUT FOR A FUTURE
There is a window in Red’s room
plus a skylight over his bed.
Out the window a dog runs and cars
go by. Trees and flowers look in.
Out the skylight an occasional cloud
but most of the time, blue.
One afternoon Red pretends there’s only
the skylight and just about goes nuts.
He tries to break through with his hockey stick
Breaks the hockey stick.
He sees a plane fly over, takes seconds.
He decides to become a pilot.
Only a very few in Red’s position
have gone on to play professional hockey.
Meteorology of Me
Driving home one day I see my head,
face in one big cumulonimbus above Route 4.
Both of us are traveling about fifty. Faster clouds
are backing up behind it. Traditional thunder,
and the cloud shuts its eyes. Cloudiness
puffs from its nose and ears. Its mouth opens
like it’s going to trumpet. A blinding light
comes down. Fortunately I’m wearing shades.
And no, I am not beamed up. Instead,
I rain. When I get home, I snow
all over the porch. What can my family do
but shovel me off for the night. Morning breeze,
and I drift above the hedge where I evenly coat
the boxwood, create a scene from a picture postcard.
Noon approaches. I melt. Much of me
sinks in sod. The lesser of me lifts,
reaches for the moons and planets
dangling in a deep blue nursery.
Kites
Air over Minnetonka is breathless with kites.
A dusking
of darting paper fish in an eddy.
Each is pink.
Mary Kay pink.
Jayne Mansfield Cadillac
pink.
Breezes plink
their strings. Taut, some thrum.
Tails of bowties flutter with swallows, odd moths.
Flashlights, porchlights, cigarette lights
pop
out of poplars.
Eyes at Eyelands in Egypt
blink!
Flyers on docks,
in pontoon boats on the lake top
hold tight
to these answers to everything.
Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he has published in the Cincinnati Review, Edison Literary Review, Everest, Faultline, Forge, Gertrude, Heliotrope, Lumberyard, lungfull, Oak Bend Review, Stickman Review and Triggerfish Critical Review, among others. He has lived in Cincinnati, Atlantic City, Philadelphia and New York and currently writes from the family homestead in Pennsylvania where he is constantly trying to keep his barn from falling down! He dreams of living on Cape Cod.
Constellation: Scintillans 