Secrets

So pleased to be sharing J.R. Solonche's work with you today. Thank you, Joel!

Portrait of the Dickinson Children
by J.R. Solonche

Even if you did not already know, you would know.
It's the ten-year-old redhead on the left.
It's the one with her head on fire.
It's the one with the faraway look in her eyes.
It's the one with the open book and the rose in her hand.
It's the one with the one thousand seven hundred seventy-five secrets in her smile.

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To My Beard
by J.R. Solonche

What can I say but I am sorry,
I apologize for what I do to you,
my daily ruthlessness and cruelty.
What can I do but ask for your forgiveness
and your patience. For someday,
I promise you, someday I swear
on the beards of the prophets
and on the beard of the poet Whitman and
on the beard of the president Lincoln,
I will not stop you any longer,
I will let you go free, I will take down
the fence around you made of sharp blades.
For someday, I promise you, I will let
you run wild through the valleys
of my face like a stallion, I will let you
wander over the desert of my face
like a holy man in his vision of heaven
and hell, I will let you grow, blossom
and flourish, and I will stroke you
and comb you and keep you orderly
and free of knots and tangles,
and you in turn will make me look
distinguished, a wise old man as I stroke
you looking serious, looking as though
I were thinking deep thoughts about
life and death. But I will be thinking
only about you, my beard, my second face,
and this will be our secret.

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Blue Butterfly by Dexter Wasyliszyn
A Blue Butterfly
by J.R. Solonche

I was outside reading.

A blue butterfly settled on the table.

The opening and closing of its blue wings

looked like a small blue book opening and closing to one blue page.

Then it looked like a blue eye opening and closing.

Then it looked like the blue book.

Then it looked like the blue eye.

Then the blue book.

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Silver
by J.R. Solonche

When I was six,
my father used to take me
to the firehouse on Wadsworth Avenue
in Washington Heights
to visit the black and white dog
and to ring the silver bell
above the silver bumper
on the front of the fire engine
with the silver dollar he took out
of his pocket and placed in my hand.
Then we crossed the street
to the hobby shop where I watched
the electric train chug round
and round on its round silver track.
Some years later,
with my mother in department stores,
I would look at the silver jewelry
in the jewelry counter, but never the gold.
And still, it is the moon I love,
not the sun.
It is the moon I love,
even one night into new, even one night from none,
even then when it is but a sliver
of silver,
it is the moon I love.

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"Portrait" and "Silver" appeared in Eclipse: A Literary Journal (2007), "To My Beard" in Atlanta Review (2003) and "A Blue Butterfy" in The Adirondack Review (2012). Posted with permission of the poet.

Betsy at Teaching Young Writers is our Poetry Friday host today.