Earl Keener

ONLY PHILOMEN

Snow seals the thin yard in an envelope
mailing autumn’s grass to spring. The orange
sun illuminates the brass telescope,
a cold ingot still bright enough to singe
an optic floater on the sky, eyelash
above the hawk, electric over wire,
wings foreshortened to a penciled moustache.
Age and loneliness now kindle a fire,
a piecemeal denouement served underhand,
spare bones in a kettle time will render
into soup-- memories the ampersand
of connective tissue. Painful. Tender.
All that decays was once photogenic.
The aging sun is a pomegranate.



--
Earl Keener resides in Bethany, WV. He is a graduate of The Franciscan College of Steubenville, a retired gandydancer, an Ohio Valley singer-songwriter and an internationally recognized haiku poet.