I once dreamed of Bob Dylan

In a treehouse, one walled
and built from looking glass,
the old man spoke to me; leaves
colored like immanent death

drifted and swirled, their reflection
a knowing torture, and he said blankly,
“You must walk the highway
to get to the by-way.”

I blinked twice, flashing sea stones
at his face (like cracked, dried mud in noon sun)
as he pointed to the lines on mine
that had not been written yet.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Lit Up Magazine 11/08

Vulpes

You must be open to everything, he tells me
as I walk out onto the porch to count stars
and burn lungs with the sweet south.

There is a great silence in noise
watching blue screened television through blinds,
and absorbing the hum of garage door lights
making a mirage on wet pavement. Rain trickles,
as if slow moving rivers, into the grate.

Water dripping from the wood beneath my feet
vibrates like the inner sanctum of a clokkemaker,
the gears in my head constructing time stealers.

I hear 18 wheels on the wet curves, air in brakes
signaling the solemn fact that these small towns
go ghost on Sunday’s at six. All that is left
are the strangers gliding over tangles of highway,
silver-backed foxes low slung in hunt.

With nimble fingers, even in the damp coming winter,
I tell him sadly, but with conviction,
There are no stars tonight, no stars.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by LitteraTour 12/08 (Translated into Portuguese)

Black Seas

Regression happens with age,
bodies morph into sharp, geometric
renditions of flesh with insipid harsh angles.

Her face engulfed by the caverns her sockets make,
muddied pools empty and still
with no flickering fire cast about the walls.

The skin stretched over her face looks waxy
and I beckon the notion to call Madame Tussaud,
but this woman lacks singular importance in the world,
one old leaf ready to be blown about
and put back to the earth. No accolades for her bravery.

I sit here in the dark watching her breath hover,
the vapor shaped in the image of Gabriel,
and I let the room escape me.

Her collarbone creates a valley
that could hold the Black Sea, her mind lost
somewhere between youth and release,
and I want to touch the sweat collecting there.
Her salted life seeping up from her center
as if a spring of ground water.

My fingers reach out silently
as she opens her eyes in one, small moment
of lucidity to ask me,

“Am I still alive?”

Her face alight in that second
showing me the heartbreak of lovers, meals cooked,
children swaddled, and presents given with knowing.

“Yes,” I tell her, “yes.”

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Heroin Love Songs 11/08

Try as he may to keep them

Brambles both red and black begin
their reach to birth, entangled with
briar and her fresh face that is always
accompanied by some sting of pain.

The long hibernation of life,
a shallow breathing in winter,
gives up with arms spread wide,
chest open and unprotected to the sun.

There is a great deception in the new
tenderness of May with her skies the color
of summer, and stoic white cloud plateaus
I could climb if not so out of reach. The air
remains stiff enough to bite noses carnelian.

Old father makes his last attempts
to keep his daughters three
inside his hovel; to keep them from
shedding layer upon layer
revealing shoulders and knees

and lips to the wayward souls
of the men of summer, but they
disregard his pleas and warning
laying but a gentle kiss on his cheek.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

The map to the road of happiness

Streets suddenly are lined with trees
burgeoning leaves in yellow-green, while
the cherry and crabapple send pink promises,
like tiny baby fingers, into the road.

Around us there is music lifting
from windows rolled all the way down, the heat
carries portions of songs from the lips of drivers;
fingers tap the roof as heads bob to the beat.

Driving out of town, the season’s change
gets marked with signs of orange, their
directional nature reassuring that order
is once again restored with the rise of Mercury.

The river low and green banked, pulls alongside
the town that has settled into its curves. Willows
begin to weep, and fathers stand with toes in the water
showing sons how to cast out and reel in.

We pull to the side of the road for ice cream,
the olds stand scattered in their early afternoon
glory, leaning on canes in lines for sweet creams
in flavors of their youth. This is one more summer

added to the decades; time allowing them green
leaves for just a short while longer, and giving them
another chance to smile at their lovers while playfully
catching drips that slide down cake cones.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

In the moments of waiting

The river is at its banks, willing
spring with sheer force and for the first
time, I can see the hills lit up
in the pallid end of winter’s grip;

clouds hang lazy in a pink-tinged
yellow sunset lighting up
spires of churches and dusty
smokestacks, factories in full blaze.

Mangled branches pierce the horizon
pushing fingertips of new green, a promise
of life to bring us a much needed bounty
if only we could wait that long.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

What we find when we are not looking

Tired limbs are dragged through the new spring grass
forging the crest of the dyke; the creek is already
lower than after last year’s thaw. We comment
its difference as if it tells some new meaning to life.

The air comes up cooler by the rocks,
tightens our skins in a pleasant way, giving
the impending end to this walk a heaviness,
an ill-fitting cap to the day.

We share a trust, she and I, as her tiny hand fits
into my bigger one, to lead her to places of safety;
the ease of her doing this bends me
round the heart in this hushed moment.

Feet move down the embankment in measured steps
laced with hesitation, until level ground is felt. We speak
of adventures and the risk of unknown paths taken in haste,
but more so, of the risks incurred for not.

A verdant trail snakes gently through hordes
of dried grasses and skeletons of Queen Anne’s lace with heads
tilted and dethroned; carcasses of milkweed with pods half-cracked
reveal pristine fluff with seeds, loosely attached.

And there is more than wonder written on her face
as I send creamy tuffs through the air, floating precariously
on wet wings; her stray flaxen curls bounce in the chase,
sun-reddened arms reach to catch fairies in mid flight.

My gaze strays to the small, bare tree. Perched head high, the red-
winged blackbird speaks, cocks his head east and west, leaving
one shiny eye in my direction before launching
into the dying light.

Above, the moon hangs loosely in her three-quarter
dressing gown, makes eyes at the sun across the way; the sky
more tropical than oceans with hills red fired behind,
and we stop to look.

Her head rests against my ribs with an arm
wrapped round, fingers lightly digging into my hip,
and both of us breathing it in. I stretch my free hand out
to the side, waiting for yours to slip in it,

making a connection between us,
somehow putting a circle together and filling it in
with more than could be expected while
crowning it with a smile above our heads.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

This night changes all others

Up from the ditches, weeds
lush and green make a mockery
of the stagnant waters
they came from.

Robins with their red-breasted
double buttoned suits, fastidious
about their worms after the first
spring rain floods them to the surface.

Their deep, earthy musk like
loam, rich and moist, mingles
with the new mist forming in the center
of the road, just a fledgling fog.

Forsythia in full push of the season,
with its woody arms bear
sparks of butter yellow sun,
warming the damp of evening.

In the glow of houses,
with soft porch lamps lit,
rocks painted as ladybugs huddle
at bases of mailboxes, giving rise to good omens
and letters of love to bless this house.

An old woman shuffles to the screen door to watch me pass
when her faithful Lab loosens a hollow bark of warning;
wrinkled hand rests on his black head,
wet nose nudges up in gratitude.

My eyes become set to the treetops, their black lines
intricate and fierce like pumping arteries that carry
the blood of spring, and I stare off until
my vision goes blind in twilight's grip.

Again, I look for you in this days ending,
wanting to speak to you of how mists rise
and nights fall; how birds dance and puff
in their mating time; the preciousness of buds on trees

still brilliant green in shadow's depth; the smell
of dirt and how someday we will nap in it
one last time when the leaves of our lives
peter out into obscurity.

But what is settled for, begrudgingly,
are tales told to road signs and curved
double yellow lines with their boundaries
and halts, until the moment of longing is gone.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

One heart is harbored in the flight

Clouds move over the hills in blackness, a warning
of the tremulous voices that will bellow
into the hazy sky ahead, rolling
like oil smoke towards the house.

Children continue to run in the courtyard
with their handmade kites, fashioned
to branches of core-dead trees, not realizing
they are becoming fleshy lightening rods.

Thunder comes first in a slow, bitter boil, a sound
felt in the bones before it is heard;
the electricity creeps through the heat,
lifts hairs from skin and quickens the heart.

In this cosmic turning, birdsong ceases, no notes of spring
laced in the wind blowing hard; kites tense
on long yarns and fishing line while
tender young curls of hair mix wildly in the air.

We escape the first clap and bolt by only
mere seconds, darting through raindrops
bigger than life itself, and sit laughing on the stoop,
each inspects the others dirty feet and grass stained fingers.

Rain pours down in sheets as if invisible curtains
were sent to cover the sun. I sit on the bed with windows
opened and mist touching my face pressed into the screen.
The thunder now ominous is followed with flashes bright and defined.

The parking lot floods, water rushes into the grate, adds
to the symphony of raindrops on steel chairs, wooden planks,
concrete ,and tile. It is a rushing that pushes
into the heart like the sound of your voice, low in my ear.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

If we were the only ones in existence

Earth worms in a race across
blacktop, wet with new rain,
the inner workings of their
bodies evident as they stretch out
fat and juicy just begging for the hook.

Dandelions have closed up shop, no
canary sunshine heads, no lion’s
mane with thick grains of pollen
to shine under chins or wipe
off children’s noses while smiles invade our faces.

The squeak of galoshes on the slick
pavement and the simple giggle that
rises from shallow puddles, clear and inviting,
make me think of how she might look sideways
to you, verifying rain boots are for splashing.

Molecules of water cling to the strands
of my hair, still wild and unkempt
from a morning of fitful dreams, after
awakening hours before with you on my mind
and joy spread the width of my face.

I sit inside waiting for the bus
watching umbrellas open and close,
lithe bodies jockeying for position in line, as they
report to each other the haps of the weekend.
The aroma of coffee infiltrates the room,

and I wait.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08