Coal and Marrow by Charles Thielman


 
You speed past the exit ramp
flying in overdrive,
                                your 70 mph wake
                        blowing wishbones snapped short
                of dream into dust yellowed by July sun.

Drawn as human to our magnetic stutter,
              your hands grip the wheel,
shaping your transit under sky-scrapers
            as jack-hammers cube the air.

Witness the bland ease of ambivalence
long after moonset has cinched the sleeping faces
  of so many sheep
    ocean shelf into trench.

You hum along to the sax anthem
spun every morning by the FM D-J
            stationed before dawn
                            to smooth the rush,
                                conduct the transit,
                                    java cup in one hand,
                              voice blooming into mike,
                  rolling disparate carts through fog
        as the work-week lays blue-prints
    over the tunnels of dreams.

                  Coal-encrusted miners surface and re-surface
                                            hungry to see
                      bighorn threading along rock edges,
                                    fur lit by sunrise,
                          their deep eyes reflecting
                                                        orchards and corn,
                                                                      heron and robins.

 
 
 
Charles Thielman‘s poems have appeared in The Pedestal, Gargoyle, Poetry365, The Criterion [India], Poetry Salzburg [Austria], Gangway, Windfall [Oregon], Muse [India], Battered Suitcase, Poetry Kanto [Japan], Open Road, Poetry Kit and Pastiche [England], Belle Reve, Tiger’s Eye and Rusty Nail.