Poetry | Winter 2023

Four Poems

by Alex Light

Savage Treasure

The sand is like flesh

And God’s breath is in furious form

Whipping the robes of a lone figure

Who’s searching for his treasure

Within the creator’s crowning jewel

Golden

Shifting

Dancing:

Desert

Mountain Man Sings

Open mouth brought to mind

The far-off time when he was forest boy

Joy escaped his lips and lit upon the trees

The goldfinch studies this mountain song

Yellow flags flew free until he tied them 

With string to show the mountain’s spine

The way down to his family is indicated

In the waving fabric sunrise 

Mountain man falls silent 

He’s drawn up into the sky

His yellow flags fall 

Under father time

His grandson has forgotten him

Then he sees the patient mountain 

Hears a singing hermit’s call

Turn into the voice of a goldfinch

The old yellow flag line

Is well known to the young birds

Singing the mountain man's song 

Is an old family pastime

The bird children guide the grandson 

Playfully up the mountain’s spine

Falling Past Atlantis

Pages and pages about Atlantis 

Flew up above and around me

The fear of falling has me

Speechless

The air leaving in gasps,

Falling, and already beneath the world’s cities,

Toward an ending in the world’s core

But how massive are these green buildings!

Still rushing by

Stopping my panicked pinwheeling

I say aloud,

To no one–or to the angels–

How wonderful,

That someone built all this for me to fall past.

Age Line Atlas

I panicked when the first path to the promised land

Drew a furrow between my eyes

In a brand new bloom of stress.

Only slowly did I learn how adults dress.

But at night, sharing the truck bench,

My eyes saw the wise old face you might someday be,

Saw the radiant city I could also achieve:

Guiding the furrows of life to bloom evergreen

The emerald ink filled empty, forgotten pages

With the way to Atlantis.