J.M. SUMMERS

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Image by Corsin Taisch

Bleeding sinuses

Bleeding sinuses and a running nose 
can be a sign of cancer, but also of 
an infection, and anyway you can drink 
with the one but not the other. It’s 
been raining again, as if it will 
do so forever, despite the tree 
blossom and daffodils and snow-drops 
and crocuses and the tulips that make
lie of the new season, 
but then again she’s been drinking, 
and the nights are a mess of random
black-outs and blood and other small 
indignities, the things that you used 
to enjoy but can no longer, and dreams
in which the moon hangs in a frosty sky, 
regardless, how you plucked it and set 
it in the empty eye-socket from which 
it stared back cold, and regardless, too. 
You tried to explain why, but 
I wasn’t listening then, either.

It has been five years


It has been five years, and we 
were painting the same room then 
too, holding to the same false 
hopes. Waiting for the grass to 
be long enough to mow, and for 
the apple tree to blossom so that 
we might sit beneath it and enjoy 
a book and a (stiff) drink, perhaps, 
wondering at the cross burning on 
the hillside (or anyway at the 
electricity bill), and what is it 
supposed to mean, the burning that 
lingers at the bottom of the glass, 
and in the waking for a piss at two 
AM, this calm, and waiting, this fire. 
Remembering, dammit, remembering, 
that once upon a time there were 
things that you no longer can.

We Are Waiting, Always


We are waiting, always. 
For one ending, or another,
beginnings, of a new kind. 
Learning 
from the patience of the 
hills, the sketch of birds, 
unknown, in their solitude. 
Heedless in their desire.
For change. For the season 
to turn, for spring, for 
the young to come, to go. 
To forget, that there will
come a time, when the waiting
is all that will remain.