High Horse

By Michael Harkin

Arcadia
 In a dream, there’s a place I try to reach 
Persistently: I try and I try 
But the structure won’t allow me: 
The Escher stairs, the faulty signage. 

But I can look out at the fields beyond 
And they are filled with a golden light 
And billowing clouds, and salty breeze. 
I must have arrived by boat.



High and Lonesome
The night train whistles in the town below 
We live in the hills, that estate whose distance 
Makes its shriek into a plangent moan, better for sleep, 
And for conjuring bits of radio songs. 
In this high place, sounds barely reach us 
But the smell of a wildfire cannot be masked 
Even by the masks we wear to stave off death. 
Our breath is a task, a labor, an obligation.


A Valediction 
For my friend with whom I would pass the time, time has passed. 
I hold the memory of her eyes, her laugh. 
Trees shaking in the breeze; like hands in the stele from ancient Greece. Farewell to the traveler, may you find your peace.


Masonboro 
I have ridden the waves of time: of days and years. 
I have written the lines erased by the tide. 
To land on an unexpected shore, 
One that’s oddly unstable, a palimpsest. 

My father and I were walking—in a dream— 
And I pointed out something dead on the beach 
A horseshoe crab, perhaps, or a gull— 
As the tide recedes, and the dreamer awakes.