“Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it begins as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.” —Mary Oliver

Joseph Kerschbaum’s most recent publications include Mirror Box published in 2020 by Main St Rag Press and Distant Shores of a Split Second published in 2018 by Louisiana Literature Press. His work has appeared in Reunion: The Dallas Review, Hamilton Stone Review, The Inflectionist Review, Main Street Rag, In Parentheses, and Umbrella Factory. Joseph lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his family.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Joe, what poems have you brought for us today?

Under the Surface


On a summer evening,
unremarkable
in its casual radiance
of which we are
not yet aware,

security cameras
in the parking garage,
bank, coffee shop,
& liquor store
record our
dinner party
meandering
to our parked cars
as we stroll
through an
intersection where,
six hours later,

a crime scene
blooms when
a college girl
walks in our wake,
turns the same corner,

& vanishes
without leaving
so much as
a strand
of her blond hair.

The next morning,
our evening
is reframed
through a lens

of danger.
Cruising the block
for what looked like
a parking spot,
that old red
Chevrolet pickup truck

was maybe a predator
from a distance circling
us. At the restaurant,
the lanky gentleman
who held the door
could have been
sizing us up,
calculating

terrible possibilities.
Like a calm, reflective
lake mirroring
a clear blue sky
as a dragonfly
skims the surface
after a drowning,
the world
swallowed her

without a ripple
in the morning light.

 
Augury


Our bedroom window looks east
toward the tree you grew from a sapling

where new days take root
in the gentle sweeping of the graceful willow.

This morning, singing stirred me awake.
Perched within the branches, flashes

of black & yellow feathers flutter
as a bouquet of magnolia warblers

rest on their journey north.
Your favorite avian tourist

must have chosen
today of all days

for a reason,
I tell myself.

I neglect
the knowledge

of migratory patterns
that place these birds here every year.

Disregard the awareness
of seed feeders in the yard.

Quiet the skeptic
& permit a sliver of divination.

I choose to accept
this occurrence

as a coded message
transmitted through tree leaves

& birdsong. This is your voice
now. It is not enough.

None of this is real.
I am listening.
 
Invasive Species


Under a midsummer canopy,
swinging wildly
from a tire, my daughter says
the giant oak tree
is tall enough to catch clouds
& pull them apart
like cotton candy.

Feet dangling in the sky,
she asks how long the oak
has lived here. We have to
chop it down & cut it open
to count the decades
of concentric circles.

Thick bark like rigid armor
withstands lashing tornadoes,
punishing winters. Still,
there is vulnerability
at the roots. Tiny thieves
with spiked leaves
snake around the trunk,
quietly smothering the soil.

Gripping their green throats,
my gloved hands
hack & slash
until I uproot the weeds.
Toss their spindly bodies
in the compost.
Spoon-feed them
back to the earth.
If these viny interlopers
were the narrator,
I would be the murderer,
the evil ogre
who returns each spring
to eradicate their offspring.

Blunt tools, bitter poison,
& smothering darkness
under a moist blanket of trees
butchered & mulched.
Still, they struggle, sprout & climb
into the nourishing sunlight.
At the apex of their arduous journey,
they discover me eclipsing the sun,
waiting with a spade shovel.

Senseless violence
always makes sense to someone.
This is how someone small like me
saves a colossus like an oak.
If the giant ever tumbled,
our house would snap like a clavicle,
crush my family as we sleep.

You're listening to the poems of Joseph Kerschbaum on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.