Returning Home, Teachers

 

Dying swamp trees are irregularly spaced

by lynx’s cry answered indifferently well,

resigning itself to a natural Providence:

self-satisfied. It filled a belly with wild mice

several times more vigilant than dying trees,

clicking beneath with cricket frogs throats;

occasional ‘shrills’ at yellow unicorn mush-

room caps that appear to flutter somberly.

 

From a parked wagon a boy is shouting

at dogs out of hunting cages breaking free:

fall fragrant nostrils lighting a first sojourn

event: pairs of oval rhombic blotches

freed in homely patterns of loosestrife &

stripe brown rhythmic leaps pointing back

to inconspicuous silky, odd-waving origins.

 

Each rushing game in Ithaca stuck together.

Each knew that that funnel squeezed

nutrients out of stingy places. Seeds or

wood sticks, evidently, fed hungry rituals

meditating over oversounds of carcasses

spreading seed plants, risen to dominance.

Furious chases to scrap flesh fresh-cut,

(both human & animal) gifts shrewdest

for brain volume prospects in hostile years

of climate extremes followed by grayness.

 

Lastly, fierce cold nights left half have learnt

broken trunks cut gale winds, diminishingly.

Even chiming catkin thickets wave no oath

of range alarms to a lynx curled in a pocket

for breeding, nearby aquatic rodent tracks

which barely shake as hind feet webbed and

larger than forefeet: scramble; too, too late!

Winter’s last lash spoils all instruction heard

in the wrecked confines of pitied burrows.

 

J. Szemanczky

J. Szemanczky is the author of Metaphysically Yours, Immaterially Mine; The Apocalyx Angels of Earth Evolution; and Synthelytic Spacetime Motion, all f/l poetry collections. A member of the CT Poetry Society and formerly of the Maryland Poetry Society, he retired as an ABE/GED CT high school-equivalency teacher and master gouache landscape expressionist painter, guiding hundreds of students to graduate successfully with CT-GED diplomas through his classes. His paintings, along with his poems, essays, and news articles, can be found on the internet, published in Soundings East, The Ravens Perch, Sone Poetry Quarterly, Balance Magazine, Pace Literary Magazine, The Providence Cowl, and many other journals, as well as on “PSC-The Front Page” website* (2009-2013*) where he served as a weekly contributing columnist, editor, interviewer, and cinematographer of Tri-States-NYC Island Metro Productions L.I., NY.