Two Poems

Steve Longfellow

Ghosts

This morning there is the mirror and the face
before I shave.

   Hello, Face,
I say . . .
                              You’re looking well,

a harmless lie as I play for time,

but the feeling rises in the hand that needs
to hold the razor, a feeling like when I was

a child and the night

brushed its stiff beard against my curtained window
or a few years  later when I was newly grown,

a volunteer fireman,

and around my ankles the smoke,
rising from a black stubble of burned grass,

drifted momentarily
in nervous little wisps

that were like hands
that wanted pockets,

fearful little hands
the wind carried away

into a blue sky
without a cloud in sight.

***

Vaudeville

Oh, one-legged man, your suspenders
clasp you like hands

holding the world
up and you lean into them

as into a stiff wind or
as a horse in a harness

would, pushing forward
one step at a time.

                  *

Oh, one-legged man, your arms
are strong and carry you into 

the tree tops where the leaves
sweetly clap. Now,

you’re out on a limb
and float in the sky like a bird

as day floats into night
like a salmon returned home 

and quietly decomposing.

                  *

Oh, one-legged man, playing
at pirate, a dough hook hangs

from your cuff like a question
mark asking what you have left

up your sleeve. Long John,
the kids love you at parties.

Arghh! You say. . . Arghh!
as you lift the patch from your eye

and wink at the little one
who clings to your crutch

because life is still just
a balancing act. . . . Arghh!
                                   
                  *

Oh, one-legged man, looking
at an old photograph

hung in an antique frame,
your reflection floats there

on the glass and reminds you
of an anamorphosis,

the oddly distorted skull,
painted by some old master

who might have known
what he was doing.

                  *

Oh, one-legged man, your sock
fits like a glove on your hand

and reminds you of childhood,
reminds you of Lamb Chop.

So, what do you say, Mr. Sock?
Shaped like Italy

Of course.
and ears like an elephant.

Impossible. No ears at all.
No? But, I see their great lobes

at my sides, wiggling
like toes, oh, one-legged man.

The sock sways before you
with a life of its own,

a faceless trunk searching
with a keen sense of smell

and, suddenly afraid
of the least misstep,

you freeze. Then you laugh,
putting it away in a box

of loss for the last footstep
abandoned.

                  *

Oh, one-legged man, alone
in your room, watching

your step in a glass half full
with left-right irony, you laugh

but you were once
quite a dancer and your pants,

like a vaudeville’s drawn curtains,
reveal one shoe still listening

for the last of the applause.

Steve Longfellow is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA in Writing Program and teaches a little at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. His poetry is currently in or forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Crannog, Oak Bend Review, Los Angeles Review, A  Hudson Vie Poetry Digestand Literary House Review and Summerset Review.

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