[POEM] Three Poems by Mark Folse

Three Poems by Mark Folse

As a former journalist and Capitol Hill flack. I can't look away from our tortured world but I can step away from it, among the old growth like oaks in the park or in the forest arboretum. When my bipolar was raging 12 years ago these places helped save my life. When friends talk about their constant anxiety I tell them to go spend time with the trees. Redemption isn't in two crossed pieces of lumber; it's in the living leaves.

Outside in the Rain

In the distance the rain is gauze

across the trees, context rendering

the disparate into coherence.

Falling it is indistinguishable from

cloud. The world takes shape

in words as we observe it.

In the yard the rain is shooting stars

falling straight down, a soft hiss

that turns the stars to bits of television

static interrupted by the drumming

on leaves, the flop of drops plunging

off the eaves onto the sidewalk.

I close my eyes returning to

the Portland Japanese Garden

in the rain, the gentle dishabille of

sculpted sand in the karensansui garden.

I place those stones in the corner of my yard,

moss and lichen grateful for the rain.

I sit in quiet listening.

An Omen in Couturie Forest

I startled a hawk not ten feet away

who talon-tight stood his branch

against the racket of screaming engines

ripping up an inconvenient tree,

that noise giving cover to my boots

until our eyes met. He didn't go far,

a branch just a little further off trail

from which we regarded each other

as I passed. I was fuming blue

like an angry two-stroke motor

at the contractors turning trails

to  mud pits as they shredded

inconvenient bits of forest but

I was gifted not just this sighting

but a calm known only to a raptor

too noble to be bothered by

chain saw wielding barbarians,

granting me safe passage under

his sharp eye—good omen enough

in dark circumstances for those

who know to follow the birds.

In Green

I saw a woman dressed

to exercise bent, hands on knees

as if to rest until suddenly

she sat hard at the base

of a live oak tree. Are you OK

or just tired? I asked. No,

she answered, I'm grieving,

wringing tears from her face

 I bowed a bit and said,

I'm sorry.

As I walked away, the spirit

of the stairwell came (too late)

and whispered in my ear—

no better place than here

beneath these live oak trees

that will outlive us all

remind us we will all

come back

in green.

IG: @mark504ever
Website: wellbottomblues.com

Author Bio

Mark Folse is a poet and retired journalist, blogger, and IT factotum, and a native of New Orleans. His poems have appeared in Peauxdunque Review, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Delta Review, Unlikely Stories, and The Maple Leaf Rag. He was a member of the post-Katrina/Federal Flood NOLA Bloggers writing and activist group, and his work from that period was anthologised in What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Louisiana Anthology, and A Howling in the Wires.