Mark Jackley

Thanksgiving

There is a feeling of ceremony
as a maple extends its arms
and sheds its crimson leaves
on the grass before a farmhouse,
of jewels being laid at someone's feet,
of shyness and grace,
and silence,
of bowed heads, and debts
no one can repay. 


© 2007 Mark Jackley

In a Diner A Middle-Aged Couple
Runs Out of Things to Say

The white table is like a glacier
dividing China and Tibet,
a place where things disappear as quietly
as the snow leopard, whose
dark eyes and twitching tail,
blood lust, immense paws
are a memory cold 
as coffee in still hands.


© 2007 Mark Jackley

After I Laid Him Off
I Drove Him Home

His molten anger soon
sputtering into silence,
hardening into fear
of telling his wife,
and the coolness
of his darkening kitchen,
my white hands on the table,
my tongue, curled, still
as anything in Pompeii.


© 2007 Mark Jackley

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