Sample Poems by George Keithley

---

Voices, Stillness

Late on a clear night
along the Missouri
the last of our fire

flickers into blue
or blood- red

embers. They shudder,
shift-break

open. Sparks
flare up

forming their thin
swarm. But fall back

into this world.
The embers settle,

hiss with fierce
persistent life.

We listen to
the rhythmic lapping

of the water. We
hear its current,

almost the sound
of voices singing

on the far shore
until they drift off

like the first souls
to cut timber for

the fishing camp.
Who sank pilings

to support their pier
and built the flood-

blasted boathouse.
Peaked roof, pinewood

walls and floor washed
away. Where the pier

collapsed the current
sloshes each pair

of skeletal pilings.
Now it pours down-

now it pours down
everywhere- this

deepening stillness
while the full moon

climbs the sky-
While it rises over

our dusky embers.

The ruins, the dark
And glistering river.

---

Building a Fire


Wind thrashes the trees. At the near
edge of the clearing the camp dogs
cower, won't approach. Though the guide
changed his shirt his boots reek of blood.

Stooping beneath the trees, rising,
circling with a close, level stride,

women collect the deadfall-all
of it- armfuls bristling, brittle.

Two walking together bring in
three limbs, stout, shattered, for the axe.

In the hour when the wind is down
at last, before the coming dark,

they construct the tinder pile, boughs
broken to size, latticed. Each tier

settled across its broader base,
skeletal, unlike a house. Now

they lay the fresh-cut logs over
the kindling. Night is falling when
their work, woven of wood and air,
is touched with a fluttering torch.

---

Lines at 2 a.m. on the Sea of Cortez

The bright morning brought its mirage-
the far shore and one shadow-free
inlet loomed before us. Until
two gulls swooped across our deckhouse.
That pair rising with a single shriek
into the sudden overcast.
Then it was dusk all day. Humid,
warm, the sullen light of a low sky.

When evening arrived without stars
we saw the vast gulf grow formless-
Brackish tide pools, coves, a pocked reef

and each white beach slipped out of sight
with the sea snakes. Old turtles, all
but blind, cleaving dense clouds of silt.

The swarming crabs, hammer-head sharks,
swordfish, prowling rays. The nearly
level sea itself invisible . . .

Our boat bobs among shallow troughs,
horse-like, irritable before
the worst weather. In water quiet
but not at rest-the sleepless stir
of a tense calm. Now blue-black clouds
quake with storm light and we know
this night has a life of its own,
we hear it breathing in the dark.

---

Iron, Old Tin, & Wood

Bean fields, corn fields, they lose their green luster.
Twilight dims and fills
the stillness before a storm.
I'm tired of driving but I don't want supper.
Outside of town I pull the car over-
A giant heap of scrap metal sprawls above the river.

Late at night by the riverbed
the odor of iron, old tin, and wood.

My wife and daughters sleep two thousand miles
away. I wonder if they think of me in the dark?
If they forget my face and my voice?
If I could find them the way the aging tin
finds me alone in the night with its sharp tang?

After dark rain
birds sing in the rusty dawn-
I hear them in another life.

Lying here, I've been dreaming of coming home.
I wake up and my arms are stretched out
to this one, to each one, at the same time.
This is how rain reaches through the night
to wake the grass. Then the birds come to sing.