Poems by Richard Lyons
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Late Dusk Forward
by Richard Lyons
From Canary Fall 2022
Richard lives one hundred yards from the Wolf River Watershed, where the Wolf River Conservancy meets Walnut Grove Lake--some twenty miles east of the Mississippi River.
The cellar holes heal like wounds.
Who exactly kicks the door ajar?
The pileated woodpecker’s hole
now belongs to saw-whet owls. A snake
is immobilized by the weight of its kill.
The mice reproduce so fast the number
of pine martens increases incrementally.
Hope the temperature doesn’t drop too low,
especially for us unable to enter diapause.
I’d hate to die of overexposure,
not quick enough to live in the unfazed wild,
frost stippling my eyelashes just as the sun rises.
© Richard Lyons
What Kind of Mushroom Is This?
by Richard Lyons
From Canary Summer 2022
The details, i.e., the mechanics of decomposition, may sprout a
horn—is it a sapling’s little thumb?
Or is it rhinoceros-horn? A beetle’s pinchers?
Should I ask humility to permit some forms
to flourish while others wither in slow fire? Can I bear getting
my way? I kick over a reddish
brown mushroom. Is this one poisonous?
Can we break the world into cap and gills?
Can we feel lost w/o too much panic and regret?
Can the break hold its breath so that it sticks to us
like right friendship w/o gagging the throat? Not to interfere
might return us to the seasons
if we don’t disparage anyone’s desires, if we don’t curse anyone’s
defenses that circulate like pesky bees.
Spores will carousel haphazardly, spreading an indigence
that affixes some pretty large trees and a million apertures
circulating mineral saps and salves with feathery exhalations. Some specific
microorganisms may depend on the generosity
of our recent epithelial cells. These losses may be the delicacies the
smallest mites relish in the future we used to take for granted.
© Richard Lyons