Beneath the lamp room; past the wires, the cans of kerosene; past steps still bearing whale-oil stains; outside the weathered door and window pane; beyond the brick and stucco--
upon the relic shore (where no plaque frames a tidy paragraph) I kneel and read the bank of histories, written in shell ridges and the raised veins of once green leaves, now bound in sediment.
By these light marks, set in this limestone shelf before the engineer carved his first blocks, my gaze may reach beyond this rocky coast, these bare islands, to the obscurity of ages.
Upon Finding a Dead Turkey
Brother, you are fallen, wrecked, but worth your weight in sparrows to the flies that thrill your final flight toward wickerwork of quill and bone.
Shrouded now by Queen Anne’s Lace, the shade of vultures wreathes your head (beaded red and blue in death as life).
Your chestnut fan and soot brown maille hang limp, askew, and trailing remnants of a wing suggest coyote’s tracks.
Who was ever grateful for you that is not grateful now? And who will note your loss but has not found you yet? Or who will say one prayer for us?
After the Fact
Something was wrong—that gear was missing and I was out back of the barn where we keep the plow blade and the stuffed manatee that sings Kissimmee, Kissimmee come on and kiss-a-me when you pull the lever on its back—anyway I’d gone out there because without that gear your love would never come back around and pulling that lever is no fun without you-- I was one big reminiscence of Kissimmee ransacking bags of old clothes, cake toppers, programs from the symphony, and pictures of you the night of your solo up in Toledo—weird where you’d go after that—never saying bonne nuit when you left to remind me the night is a lady or waking me up when you came home—just sleeping in street clothes out in the old Lay-Z-boy—that’s back here too under a pile of aquariums, beer cans, and bath towels-- a motel for anoles like the ones we kept finding on the wall in our room that night in Kissimmee-- but that gear wouldn’t be under all that old crap-- and now I’m starting to cry because I’m starting to think that the gear isn’t there and you’ll never come back much less will you kiss-a-me or ever remind me that men mistook mammals for mermaids and soon I’ll be blubbering my grizzled chin flapping like a manatee’s mandible mouthing the words to some stupid song only tourists have heard down in Kissimmee baby oh kiss-a-me baby oh baby what happened in Kissimmee?
Just Another Blueeyed Boy
Who’d left the windows open that night? Thirty-one degrees that darkest hour and frost on all the picture frames. At dawn, the chill of vodka shouted as loudly as it had before we stalked sullenly to bed.
I remember the quiet steps we made once, you and I, following a bloody trail, hoping not to spook the gut shot doe-- one of many things dead but still able to run.
I wore running shoes to your funeral, but still couldn’t get away. I stood there staring at the dark tear in the earth; my feet had turned to dirt, and, for a moment, we were both headed the same direction.
If eyes are windows, they open on no more than a great blackness.
David Oestreich
David Oestreich lives in Northwest Ohio with his wife and three children. His poems have appeared in such publications as Minnetonka Review, Eclectica, Hobble Creek Review, and Tar River Poetry.