~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Eugene Stevenson

Moved, No Forwarding Address

            Exile is in our time like blood.

                                                         – Berryman

Away, silence is the best defense.

Away, a dark suit is better than armor.

Away, a quiet voice is an invitation to listen.

Away, anonymity is exploration, discovery.

Away, creativity is arising in the morning.

Gone up north into the treeless peaks,

gone south into the oak and pine forests,

difficult to trace, footprints lost. This is home,

was home, a few years ago, is now again.

The car moves past, no greeters at the gate.

Potholes slash at rubber, telephone numbers

fade into a black book, hillsides lush from rain

overpower the highway and bury a page of

the handbook: Stay put if you are to be found.

Unsure of direction, the body stays in motion,

trades shoes for boots, treads the familiar into

the unfamiliar, leaves sea-level for altitude, until

wind whips litter around and wraps days around

like a blanket. With time, phone calls stop, mail

dries up; no one asks the neighbors questions.

Mozart in the Middle of the Night

Hours-long, sound, sweet sleep

swaying in an offshore breeze,

rolling gently in curls of neap tide.

Instead, the question comes in

wind-driven surf at high tide,

wave after wave of What music?

So far gone, the concerto loops

over and over in the half-haze

following an aborted dream.

Mozart in the middle of the night,

and that’s the trouble, isn’t it:

an aborted dream, aborted dreams.

 Rooms to Let

Weekend mornings, this winter,

come to call, weepy early in the day,

briefly, then steadily over

Saturday, Sunday, as if to

recompense the lack of other callers.

Couples once filled these rooms,

refugees from other coupledoms,

pooled their furniture, books,

some, not all, their photographs

from other lives, other times.

Now an old man stakes a claim,

pieces of his prior lives, the places,

the people he once knew, of

which and whom he thinks fondly,

as he now he remembers them.

The young man, locked inside

his moulding outer frame, sees

the box, flame, ashes, and writes of

weekend mornings gone, here,

before meeting her for brunch.

Eugene Stevenson, son of immigrants, father of expatriates, lives in the mountains of western North Carolina. A Pushcart Prize nominee and author of the chapbook, The Population of Dreams (Finishing Line Press 2022), his poems have appeared in The Galway Review, The Hudson Review, In Parentheses, San Pedro River Review, Susurrus Journal, Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Washington Square Review among others. Email: gnstvn@gmail.com