Alan Reynolds
featured poet, 1996

My First Wolf

The top of the cave wall
at the limit of my reach
is where I paint
the small triangles
the tips of his ears
creating a still life
from the newly dead
using as paint
blood from my other arm
the one he mangled
with his white sharp teeth
paint his eyes from memory
flashing not glazed like now
sketch his cheeks
fill them with fur
blurring the strokes
my maimed arm stiffening
wound drying
replenishing my red
from his caved-in side
my stone axe still
in the wound
tip of his cut-off tail
my streaming brush


© 2008 Alan Reynolds

Paviljoen De Colonie, Utrecht

The sensation I am winning when I park
after forty minutes searching for a space
intensifies my pleasure.  There’s a spark
of inspiration here, a carapace
of civil splendor covering the cold
hard paving stones I clomp along until
I'm there.  I go inside into the fold
of warming quiet that conversations fill.
De Colonie is cheerful and top drawer.
With good red wine and croquettes from Van Dobben
it is worth the searching, parking, walking for.

© 2008 Alan Reynolds

(Paviljoen de Colonie is a very nice place in the center of Utrecht.
I do not know which of the times I was there when I wrote this.)

Smidgen

Midge, who likes a challenge, memorized
her husband's faults.  His virtues were too easy.

© 2008 Alan Reynolds

I Alone Played Out

Just yesterday, none of this conversation
I am having with myself had taken place.
Surrounded by good friends, it’s hard to ration,
and I, as far from famine as disgrace,
had carried on as if the golden race
of present pleasures would be always mine.
The weekend’s rapture fades to Monday’s whine.
Eternal Mozart’s flip side is a moan
that mocks my face reflected in the wine
I order, sneer at, pay for, drink alone.

© 2008 Alan Reynolds

Quayside Sketches

I want a book for sketching.  Life is fine
deserving praise, commemoration, paint.
My love is buying paint; I’m sipping wine.
I watch a couple starting to entwine
on a bench beyond my table, but they don’t.
Their hearts aren’t really in it so they won’t
go further than embracing, playing games
although the waiter says one of them moaned
so maybe they will ask each other’s names.

© 2008 Alan Reynolds

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