After The Sun Dies
By Derek Ellwood
Through a fissure of
A cell window
Fifteen calendars, same view
Congested by crossbars.
The slender moment between
Day and night, light and dark
Is where I hold myself.
Dusk expires quickly and the world
Turns black,
Which fails to describe this
Degree of darkness.
No longer do I see millions
Of tiny gas lanterns
Illuminating the canopy over
The John Day River.
The stars have melted
From the sky.
My emotions conflicting, a riptide
Pulling me further away
From my reasoning.
I am absorbed by my
Consequences,
Trying to interpret pain
Without a mark.
Dystopian thoughts control me now.
My mind speeding down
Streets I’ve never actually been.
But they are my thoughts,
So I feel attached to them.
Flashes of short films disrupt
The suffocation
Of my perceptions,
Memories of adolescence.
Berry fields, brown bag lunches,
Shasta cola,
Thoughtfully wrapped in tinfoil
To keep it cold.
A mother’s touch.
Now strawberry fields only
Surface in song.
Nearing is the hour when
Confinement crumbles
Around my feet and
I can take in unseasoned
Prospects.
Until then I will stew
In consideration
Around how much of this
Darkness will release with me.
The Skin of Plums
By Derek Ellwood
The summer sun clung to my skinny body like warm honey,
As my thoughts were held hostage
By the copious small green orbs
That hung from our backyard plum tree.
They reminded me of small avocados with their leather-like skin.
They were young and so was I.
And I was also processing both our maturities,
When they would become deep purple balls of juiciness
And I would be getting my driver’s license.
Lost in pondering
I was taken off balance by the assault,
Ambushed by a brisk winter chill,
A Northern Exposure
I was unprepared for.
I had heard my father angry before,
Yet his unprovoked slur of words
tore into my back like a leather strap,
Each uttering another wound—
I do not recall ever being fearful of my father
But in that moment, I thought I could be.
Words were spoken, bones were bruised,
and in an instant, I had to learn to protect my skin,
Something that these young plums and I,
on that day, shared in…
Survival.
I felt reduced, smaller than the fruit on that tree.
After that day, I stopped going out to the backyard,
retreating from my summer ritual.
I lost my romance for the anticipation
Of watching those plums grow.
Perhaps I stopped growing as well.
My summer coalesced around its impending curtain call.
I glanced out at that tree
Through the small window from our kitchen.
All the plums had fallen to their resting,
swarms of yellowjackets hovering over them
hoping to scavenge what sugary substance may have been left.
I took a breath and with heavy steps
Took one last walk out to that plum tree.
I knelt, almost in sadness and tribute,
Picking up one of the plums that didn’t have a bee on it,
Thinking there might be one good plum left.
Yet, like me, it was
Bruised and had rendered its
Sweetest moment to waste.
The Raven and the Sailor
By Derek Ellwood
The cottonwood and hemlock trees
mingle in the lower pastures
Standing high by riverside
eying the flood of love’s disasters
To where I follow a raven’s fate
who scouts in pallid skies
for mate designed for only he
If knowest tears he’d cry
Toward western skies in askance flies
the raven with dirge on his heart
His sorrow I borrow like it’s
my tomorrow
A burden of grief in cart
The river a path that has
come to a crash
With vastness so large evokes
shivers
With nothing to follow his
heart has been swallowed
How will he spot a lost
lover’s quivers
When darkness falls his longing
still calls and body implores him rest
But sleep won’t come
Until he’s undone
Bound to an eternal quest
Just before the dawn awakes
I set for bountied seas
The raven perched upon the stern
of my ocean faring steed
Beyond the port between the jetties
across the bar we flee
New mates akin by broken hearts
He with I and I with he
Briskly arriving a smile on the day
pouncing to first light
the raven hastened away
I bid farewell to my
black-winged brother and watched beyond my eyes
I do not know where he is going
but I do if I dare surmise
For he is off to find that
soul that with his life entwined
Futile as much he discerns the touch
that has spawned upon his mind
Away the lines on albacore hooks
I cast in mindless dreams
upon the docks a lover lost
Does she wait for me
Judder my head to untangle webs
that twist what I may see
For maiden waits for me not
My heart is beyond its pleas
Returning to my toil for day shan’t
be spoiled to eclipse the setting sun
Blood by abrasions stain weary
invasions numb till salt I’ve become
Darkness comes calling to secure
the decks fallings and my life’s
ramblings as well
And to my surprise my old friend
I spy the raven is back
upon his rail
He makes not a move his talons
in groove, stay dipped his head to
the sea
Now bound by our fate our hearts
cannot state
Our sorrow attached like a cleat
My friend seems stolid tuft ruffled
and squalid from restless sojourn abound
Even in rest he remains on
his quest in hopes of a
calling sound
Respite to the cabin to calm
pangs that are stabbin’
I reserve a crust of bread
To share in my fare concerned
with his care
Beneath perched wings I lay spread
No time yet to uncork the flask
as I am warned by the whispers
of the moon
To finish day’s task, raven still
fast
Darkness arrives on owl’s tune
So vessel and I drift into
dreams tossed by a rocking sea
Swaddled in thoughts of lovers and
fish lost
Bring back my maiden to me
Nestled in sweetness of love through
the night
I’m nudged by the natural
cadence of light
Straight out of slumber to my
work I do lumber, raven has
already fled
He best me to work my heart
elated to jerk as I see raven
has fed
Season by season we repeat by
our reason this thing we feel
compelled to do
Old raven on his time and myself
to my lines in debt to this life
we’ve accrued
Eight seasons of chinook I’ve logged
into book the raven with me has
trekked
But change has its reasons and
this one not pleasing as raven
lay lifeless on deck
In his heart a tear that could
never appear I hold it for him
now
A moment of bleakness, helpless knees
Shake weakness
An eternal spirit will live upon
thy bow
With hands that are scarred and
labored I cradle my friend in rest
Wash his wings in gentle attention
and place him in fashioned floating chest
Giving him a last breath I send
him a’sail upon a sailor’s sea
To continue his search to the
ends of the earth, he with I
And I with he
The Footprints I Didn’t Leave
By Derek Ellwood
As I peer over a fence laced with patches of pogonip,
My eyes are drawn to a thin amber line of sky that
Sketches itself along the tips of frosted mountains.
Ridged frames tower in the distance.
As I also feel in the distance.
The crisp winter morning is a breath I can see.
With every breath I draw, I
Exhale in reflection.
The razor wire spirals across a barrier that boxes me into my existence,
My reality.
Just beyond my cage, through cobwebbed windows shuttered with rusted crossbars,
My prospect is veiled; yet I extend my vision beyond my containment.
Paint on the iron bars peeled like the corners of labels curling from discarded
Beer bottles I once retrieved alongside the John Day River.
Picking wildflowers and shoving them down the throats of those longnecks
I would sit them atop weathered fence posts precariously strung together
By rusty barbed wire,
Barbed wire meant to keep me out rather than keep me in.
Leaving footprints on the sandy banks of the river, my father’s just
Ahead of mine, fishing would begin –
Life would begin.
How to tie a knot, how to cast a line, how to avoid hazards, and I thought
We were just fishing.
Curving back into my capture, my days are late.
Taken leave, is the thin amber line.
Lingering are guard towers and razor wire
Once again spiraling upon my permanence
And stringing up my deliberations.
Ruminations of how selfishly I fucked up my own life, leaving no footprints
For a son to follow.
Closing my eyes, my thoughts eddy around the pools of the past.
For a moment, I am close to those waters again, close to those footprints, yet fat from
The footprints I did not leave.
Forget Me Not
By Derek Ellwood
Early Alzheimer’s was the diagnosis.
I did not sink.
Soon was the realization of the things that would cloud me:
When to eat,
The panicked grasp to recognize the faceless person I was talking to, the
Whispering eyes, staring at me from
Loved ones who were once not strangers.
So I gathered what thoughts I had
Amongst the bushes of huckleberries at Barview.
The same place my mother and I gathered them,
Laughing over the ones smeared all over my
Face, that didn’t make it into the bucket.
I sat on the old railroad tracks and sealed my eyes on the Coast Guard station,
Leaking out into Tillamook Bay, admiring how it steadied itself on
Barnacle and mussel-encrusted stillettos.
A cry from a long gull jarred my thoughts around reflection from the
Puzzle pieces that were about to go missing.
The shapes, depths, emotions that fit together
To form me would soon be
Permanent holes.
Alone, I tried to conceal my tears
Like the pier falling off into the
Abyss of a veiled fog.
I became an old fisherman in the Ghost Hole
Watching a collision of colored dragon-tailed streamers
Tangle and race through the fall skies over Garibaldi. We were an infusion, a graft of each other
Not fretting about forgetting.
When when my chest no longer
Rises like the incoming tides, these would be the things that would
Not forget me.
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