R. Gene Turchin

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                       Peach Trees

The two small peach trees out back
Are dressed with a thickness sprayed green
And their limbs bountiful weighed with fruit
So they seem to be like weary mothers, overlong for birth
 
Making a path ponderously through the yard,
Waddling in their fat, glorious splendor,
As we, animated dancing fools
Celebrate the coming harvest.
 
So richly blessed with bushels, we laugh
While their overload, sighing, breaks branches.
Limbs worn weary, sigh again,
Will this be done with soon?
 
Properly done, excess fruit should be shorn
Early delight of twelve billion buds overwhelmed us
No farmer’s wisdom nor books of bloom graced our yard
Enthused delusions let them grow.  Unruly child.  With abandon. 
​

night driving on two lanes

This road, I imagine, provides
Ice cream delights for eyes that
Wander its edges restlessly while
Sunlight splashes trees in summer greens.
 
Passing by with quick cute glances
“Aren't the trees soo....”
“Almost like a movie sce”...ne(s) are most real”
The peripheral corner remembers and plays across dreams.
 
But let the night curtain fall on
Ropes of rain and thunderous crash, then
Welcome the cast...with new roles to play while
Darkness paints darkness across the (sk)eyes
 
Tread a cautious step, reluctant page
This script springs not from my hand
For this Road designs its own designs, I
Think a joke, to trick, fool, us all, this dark night.
​

                    Ragged Tree

The light hums and crackles a counterpoint
Around the quietness of midday
In electric yellow,
As you stand to be witnessed,
Innocently unashamed.
With no apologies offered
For your dress:
I am, you seem to say.
 
Bone white bark stretched.
Tightly covers
Sinews made strong by years
Of bearing greenery.
Seems to me, to ripple and pulse
Like blood fed muscle
Beneath your skin.
 
Were you a dancer
In another life?
I thought I saw your form,
In the ballet.
 
The track print of brushes
Swirls through the heavens in muted blue.
A painted backdrop that plays
With a silence that is like
Basso booming kettle drums.
High, arcing hammers beat air
With raging arms.
 
Staged in front of you
Tiny winged things dance and twirl
Like notes in the warm September air.
And in the clearing
The yellow grass, a rabble audience
At your knees.
I am, you seem to say.
 
Though your roots be dry
And your branched crack and creak.
An opus or symphony, pianissimo,
Bowed by the wind
Or whispered from the breeze.
In this clearing quiet,
Quotes
I am.

Smoke

My father's mind is fading away.
Hazy white wisps,
Ghost thoughts
Drift above the house
In shards of smoke,
Dispersed by wind.
                                                           
He dances to a spastic cadence
With feet unsure
Shuffle stepping,
Bound by gravity
On dry neurons that lay strewn
Like broken twigs across the lawn
Making places so easy to fall.
                                                           
Words slip through slack fingers
Meanings lost in other times
While faded yellow papers coddle
Scraps of shoeboxed memories
Scrawled letters in funny shapes
Facing wrong.
 
A lost traveler
Wearily seeking a child's home.
And old names pitch forward,
Falling flat with faces long gone past,
Lost in fires' cloudy residue
Frail breath of life used up.
Smoke gives no substance to hold,
Only imagined pictures in the
Rising Brownian vapors
That boil up from memory.
​

R. Gene Turchin profile

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              Chaos at Tranquility Base

A dream, it was, lying softly reposed
In teddy-bear comfort
'til your cry erupted
Like a serpentine quake-wave
 
A boiling out vocal thundercloud
That shattered my frail dream shapes
So that my sleep fell away
Like torn crystal shards
 
Heavy lidded eyes strain to focus
As irises widen and
Mission control fumbles
With its unwilling appendages
 
No rest.  A new wave hurls boot-heavy feet
To slog through sand-dust
Making slop-flop noises as I
Rush to calm the epicenter
 
This base, Tranquility, you and I
We build from conquered years
But new landings disturbed the dust
Of Tranquility’s sea and swirled in our eyes
 
Blind fingers search the form
Finding feet and head transposed
Softly raise to my shoulder, sobbing eyes
Tangled blanket, thickly wet, an un-tranquil sea
 
So small is this, maker of storms
That cradles to my chest.
Your step lands mixing moon dust
With bottle warmed for my charge.
 
A landscape re-shaped by storm and quake-wave
Like Spring-Earth's garden
We stand re-newed
As Tranquility welcomes the dawn.
 

Woman with Stroller

She rolls up the avenue the stroller extended before her,
Two boys, too close, in years
Reluctantly fill its space.
                       
Limp, over-bleached-hair, bound severely
Fashions a ponytail
To look more girlish or
Ease the lines scratched from life thorns on her face.
 
The older, maybe six,
Not fastened in,
Dances beside her,
Unencumbered
Taunting out of Control. Out of reach.
Shaved head aging him with meanness.
 
A small runic adornment is etched with ink at her ankle
Its meaning unknown but “it just looked, like, bad, ya know”
A limp unrolls her gait
Applying awkward angles
To her stroll
So that the tired eyes wince with each step
Not bearing the weight of life well.
​

Traveler's Advisory

The snow lay like an unmade bed
Tracked with the night's restless wandering.
All the beauty stolen! The sparkle
Scared with ugly wounds!

I stood by the gate and watched
The cars thrash like swimmers on the storm.
Savoring the moment of the beast,
As it drew them down.

The Sun took her warmth to 
Tropic climes. Retired to a condominium
And lazed about in ambiguity
Near the pool all the day.

She left her gift
The soft blanket (if it is)
A traveler's souvenir
Picked up along the interstate
And mailed from Miami.

There was a call that begged procrastination,
So I paused a moment longer to
Scoop the snow for my lips.
(The plows would be a long time coming).

“Can't get there at all,” I cried
And hung up the phone.
Linda pulled her hat on snug
And we went out to play.
​

Water

She likes water sounds 
Table top unit pumping water 
From the base through plastic lines 
To a metal water fall. 
Landing with a splash on pebbles.  
Says it soothes her soul. 
​
I hear water dripping from a 
Broken faucet.
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