Ripples and Other Poems

By Sam Barbee

Ripples

I bait a hook, dunk it like a kiss.
Plunk disperses a concentric splash.
Each surge of the lake reminds 
any visitor the loch measures each splay or lap. 
	What creature will break its water next?
Frog hop or ducks’ paddle?  
Mallards glide confident, and rebuke 
the clouded origin of turtles exploding 
mud off velvet bottoms to hunt in shallows. 
	One less mystery to solve.

Reeds and stones swell with damp spirits.
A sunburnt stump protrudes uncontested, 
a tempered buoy claiming place.  
Splatter of slime more than blessings.  
Any undulation whether by children’s frolic
or bow’s wake, collapse against the shore, 
never disappear.  Castaways, grandiose 
with simplicity.  What harbingers 
promenade the next wave’s edge?
	Crave to caress the fresh wrinkle?
		
The calm cartography ignores wind.
I dare not blink and miss a flight or flee.  
As relativity, without demands, 
the ripples pin themselves to 
their lake’s inland legacy, content 
with glimmering reflections on water, 
strumming beneath dock’s bright planks.  
Muted, I gaze west, where this day 
escapes without me.  
	West, into something like water.

Just Hold Your Breath

Christmas morning.  Santa had delivered 
my first wish – a set of drums.  
A tom-tom’s tantrum and high-hat 
to bash prescribed quiet 
in my grandparents’ farmhouse.

Grandmother’s thin lips tremble 
when she scolds me 
about the drum set’s noise.
My mother snatched up 
the loudest components –

snare and cymbal put away
in the closet so not to crash 
the metal disc or rat-a-tat 
the tight drum.  My pounding 
disturbed granddaddy’s sleep.

Already called in, his doctor
had diagnosed Papa’s cancer –
but his non-stop hiccups stumped 
all: their tectonic rhythm, 
a metronome clocking seconds, 

click track all day, all night.  
A barber friend made a final visit 
last week to trim his long silver hair.
Papa had requested one more 
Christmas at the homeplace.  

As the attendants wheeled him out, 
he motioned me over.  
Do you like what
                            Santa brought you?
                                                             Yes, sir.

Papa, just hold your breath
                                             and hiccups go away!
He smiled rubbing my crewcut. 
Attendants counted off and hoisted 
the silver gurney across the gravel drive. 

Finding My Sonnet

Senses escape us by flecking youth stage
by stage like a full-moon spills across sea.
Lends mood and music to the crimson phase:
its sonata's visceral entropy.

Senses reveal us, naked by degree:
corporeal vows and psalms must bless us.

Allow our hollows to stand full and free  
as grim reaping waits silent and messy.

Why should my next breath slander discontent?
Witnesses march beside blind bystanders
down the lane toward their joy or lament.
Confess in stanzas while each foot wanders.

Dawn's lyric offers us fresh peach and blue,
or tinges senses with yesterday's hues.

After the Dance-Off

I’m gonna wait till the stars come out and see them twinkle in your eyes

- Wilson Picket, The Midnight Hour

The judges dismissed us with a slight shrug.
We run to the car – you in saddle shoes, me in brown bucs. 
Other exhausted contestants trudge to cars to drive home.   
A few stag angels vanish into sheltering moonlight.

Webs of ivy shiver on a white-washed fence, 
reveal the snare.  A breath of nothingness never  
replicated, like dandelions spilling their magic on wind. 
Also-rans, we inhale without heartache.  I smile, 

surefooted, eager to recite consolations like thunder. 
You want to skip forward to another second: simplicities spill 
in verses.  Our swirl tonight convinces you I can never love you 
more than I love you now.  No chivalrous chatter, only 

the charmed kiss we live for, magic strung in your necklace of stars.
We whirl innocence, like the bold grasp when you twirled me
against the skillful dancers – eager to mimic with a new step. 
Now, after your brave reel, we gasp in our midnight hour.

Sam Barbee has a new collection, Apertures of Voluptuous Force (2022, RedhawkPublishing).  He has three previous poetry collections, including That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), which was a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016; and is a two-time Pushcart nominee. 

His poems have appeared recently in Salvation South, Poetry South, Literary Yard, Asheville Poetry Review, and Adelaide Literary Magazine, among others; plus on-line journals American Diversity Report, Verse Virtual, The Voices Project, and Medusa’s Kitchen.