Two Poems

Margaret Walther

Ode to the Oboe

wanderer of the horizon, gypsy, you beckon me, haunting as the cry of
the night train, its echo in the distance

        pilgrim, take me with you—

                 traipsing through endless city streets, bazaars
                 vagabond looking for the mandalas of woven rugs
                 the eyes in copper kettles

                 folk toys, cows with blue flanks, crimson hooves
                 chassé and bow before they disappear into a satiny
                 orange barn

                 scarves—chartreuse, electric lemon, magenta—
                 stream from the sleeves of discarded theater
                 costumes

prophet, impersonator intoning the wilderness, you scroll apocrypha
—spindrift stars—into the labyrinth of my ear

                 jaguar sprints, chameleons zigzag branches
                 sepia on sepia, one lone duck traverses the river
                 seeking a mate
   

                 peonies, porcelain white, tremble, their throats
                 hoarse from trying to sing to a world of sleepers
   

                 notes reverberate, waves in a shell, for you are
                 the joker, the court jester, forever mimicking
                 yourself

          cross-dresser of the dark neck, enter—
                                                          let me hear you—

wistful chanteuse, wanting to belong, born to play alone, sojourner endlessly searching for the chaste carnival, the Mardi Gras that hawks the holy grail

***

Whiskey

a dream, a dram, Johnny Walker
pouring down your throat
endless cars, coal train

smooth as Coltrane
in the night, a foreigner shaking the bed
watch out, Sunday school teacher’s daughter—

its eye enters the keyhole
awakens you, penetrating as hornet’s sting
blurts the blues—

honey, don’t mess with me

in farm country town
dirty, disheveled hypnosis clack
a wheeze of brakes, train’s slowing down

coal chunks, grit in your mouth
its eye, winking at you
it whistles, jump on, sweetheart

oh, hold your mother’s hand, don’t get on
these tracks lead to a city of lights
you could get lost in—

end up in a cold iron bed

Margaret Walther is a retired librarian from the Denver metro area and a past president of Columbine Poets, an organization to promote poetry in Colorado. She has been a guest editor for Buffalo Bones, and has poems published or forthcoming in many journals, including Connecticut Review, anderbo.com, Ghoti, Quarterly West, Naugatuck River Review, Chickenpinata, Pirene’s Fountain and Nimrod. She won the Many Mountains Moving 2009 Poetry Contest.

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