A Small Story

Peter Everwine

When Mrs. McCausland comes to mind

she slips through a small gap in oblivion

and walks down her front steps, in her hand

a small red velvet pillow she tucks

under the head of Old Jim Schreiber,

who is lying dead-drunk against the curb

of busy Market Street. Then she turns,

labors up the steps and is gone . . .

A small story. Or rather, the memory

of a story I heard as a boy. The witnesses

are not to be found, the steps lead nowhere,

the pillow has collapsed into a thread of dust . . .

Do the dead come back only to remind us

they, too, were once among the living,

and that the story we make of our lives

is a mystery of luminous, but uncertain moments,

a shuffle of images we carry toward sleep—

Mrs. McCausland with her velvet pillow,

Old Jim at peace—a story, like a small

clearing in the woods at night, seen

from the windows of a passing train.

Rating:

Comment form:

Similar Poems:

Orfeo by Frank Lima

To my friends Each hair is a poem I gave my son
Each hair is my allowance from the universe

Read Poem

Rating:

Murderer Part I by Curzio Malaparte

I

The whole of human history …

The whole of human history
seems to be the story of men who kill,
and of men who are killed;
of murderers who light their cigarettes
with trembling hands,

Read Poem

Rating:

The Fête by Charlotte Mew

To-night again the moon’s white mat
Stretches across the dormitory floor
While outside, like an evil cat
The pion prowls down the dark corridor,
Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite
For getting leave to sleep in town last night.
But it was none of us who made that noise,
Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies

Read Poem

Rating:

Madeleine in Church by Charlotte Mew

Here, in the darkness, where this plaster saint
Stands nearer than God stands to our distress,
And one small candle shines, but not so faint
As the far lights of everlastingness,
I’d rather kneel than over there, in open day
Where Christ is hanging, rather pray
To something more like my own clay,
Not too divine;

Read Poem

Rating:

The Presence by Odysseus Elytis

MARIA NEFELE:
I walk in thorns in the dark
of what’s to happen and what has
with my only weapon my only defense
my nails purple like cyclamens.

ANTIPHONIST:
I saw her everywhere. Holding a glass and staring in space. Lying down
listening to records. Walking the streets in wide trousers and an old

Read Poem

Rating:

Hymn to Life by James Schuyler

The wind rests its cheek upon the ground and feels the cool damp
And lifts its head with twigs and small dead blades of grass
Pressed into it as you might at the beach rise up and brush away
The sand. The day is cool and says, “I’m just staying overnight.”
The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence
And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made:
There goes a plane, some cars, geese that honk and, not here, but
Not so far away, a scream so rending that to hear it is to be

Read Poem

Rating:

Vandergast and the Girl by Louis Simpson

Vandergast to his neighbors—
the grinding of a garage door
and hiss of gravel in the driveway.

He worked for the insurance company
whose talisman is a phoenix
rising in flames ... non omnis moriar.
From his desk he had a view of the street—

translucent raincoats, and umbrellas,

Read Poem

Rating:

Sisters in Arms by Audre Lorde

The edge of our bed was a wide grid
where your fifteen-year-old daughter was hanging
gut-sprung on police wheels
a cablegram nailed to the wood
next to a map of the Western Reserve
I could not return with you to bury the body
reconstruct your nightly cardboards
against the seeping Transvaal cold

Read Poem

Rating:

The To-be-forgotten by Thomas Hardy

I
I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile among the tombs around:
"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are you distrest,
Now, screened from life's unrest?"

II
—"O not at being here;

Read Poem

Rating: