My Dream of Flying And Other Poems

By Phil Flott

My Dream of Flying

Anymore I don’t tell many
how I want to bypass the coffin,
wake when birds shake trees,
breathe the spring of fresh rains.

I had almost settled for trees,
their archaic crowns
greening loess, justifying clay.

A crick in my neck
held me to that smallness,
made me see the expectations of gravel.

I needed a hungry hawk at my chickens,
the adrenalin of self defense,
to remember clouds,
the places they leave,

limitless, high;
the creature who let that blue
embrace them.

Blue Sky to Yellow Sun

The Labrador in a yellow spread
of fallen maple leaves
absorbs this Halloween morning sun
into his lungs pulsing
with the discovery of the warmth of air. 

I searched for the same
up wooded hills where pine
impossibly grow in less than their minimum of dirt.
Stately, Kelly dark, overhanging needles
blocked my sky.

I looked for huddling fire
among logs and stumps,
remained broken, pulse slowing at loss of blood
and viscous fluids—
my temperature fell.

Accumulation of years of solitary hikes
keeps me habituated to unbelief
even in earth
in autumn, my favorite time.

I wonder, do I dare trust
that a black dog spread on a coat of golden leaves
is as real
as future joy
that wants to blossom.

Must I depend on a dog,
a tree?

In the Morning

When birds’ songs raise me up
I think of the place in the sky
to which my daughter’s folded hands point.

If I were just
150 miles straight up
from her praying hands,
her human eye could not see me,
dot above the earth,
yet a thread in the patterned rug of her life
for her to float to heaven on.

As she gazes in the mirror she sees:
Today’s warmth is made for her,
as are the sculptures of this rug.

I search for other threads
to complete her patterns
on her certain flight to sky.

Deer

I didn’t want to say
how the white, bushy-tailed deer
frightened us with its sudden flounce
to freedom, but it did.

I didn’t want to say how the rusty
red squirrels were more numerous than
people as we hiked more deeply
into thicker, sweltering woods,
but they were.

I wanted to catch the soughing of the wind
in the bushy tops of the slender ash, the oak
so we could bring that refreshment home with us.

I would capture the quiet of the depths
of the woods where animals hold bated
breath wondering why bipeds that stop
sit.
I was swiftly aware
of my heart, its loudness, insistent
rhythm,
intrusion on my consciousness.

Hopalong Cassady

His perfect shirt was open at the throat
which he covered with his kerchief.
His left hand held his white horse’s leather reins,
his right ready to shoot even the air.

He talked to me the whole time
explaining what he was doing,
riding through dry New Mexico sagebrush hills
then back to old Mexico’s picket fences and flowers.

The dirty crooks galloped just ahead of him.
For the volunteer trees he could not nab them,
so they thought in their neckerchiefs
until Hop-a-long spoiled their mischief.

His white horse, black slacks,
tucked into silver-edged, spurred boots,
and his ten-gallon hat, aerodynamic and wide,
eyes knives against evil.

He Knew,

seemingly carelessly waving his carving knife,
razor slicing the Christmas ham,
about the conspiracies.
‘And don’t you kid yourself, daddio.’
His head had balded whitish
like any good conspirator’s.
His church shirt now tieless,
I never believed him.

One Christmas he slapped the pate of his bald head,
“I wish it could have been different with y’awl.”
From that basement party on, I, thirty,
allowed him, sixty-three, conspiracies,
rhetoric practiced by snapping pages
of the World Herald after dinner,
me his audience he read to.

Liver cancer surreptitiously plotted his death but he found out.
Doctor said, even if he waved his scalpel
that wouldn’t uncover the plotters.

He could holler at me now.
I sponged it up like rain in August,
wanted him to get stentorian as a summer thunderstorm
about the people making puppets of the pope, the president.

His dimming eyes
made my mind transformed.

Phil Flott is a retired priest. He has an MFA from St. Thomas in Houston.

He had poems in academy in November of ’21. Lately he has had poems in Raven’s Perch, Mutabilis Press, and Trajectory.