Corbett Buchly

gates

once you had to go afield
hunt for the portal fitted to your fate
one per lifetime if born to luck or prophecy

CUT TO NOW – such metaphysical gates
are strewn about our everyday
like high-gloss magazines

you can’t seem to silence their clamoring
so lousy with adventure it has grown
to bore us, sword in one hand blossom in the other
no more sunsets, all metaphor and denouement

would that one portal opened on ordinary
a human assembles meatloaf as another
folds faded shirts listening to the child puzzle
through grade school relationships and new math

the sermons have suggested that any portal
will do us, we can ride the flattened wave
the flash and dazzle of lithe and youthful form
the pulse of fire and vulgar song

but hastily constructed facades that veil
the caverns in the hills where our voices echo
resonate through deep chambers upon which scenes
of survival have been wrought in berried blood

we may be swarmed by the parade of portal
but not every adventure is the one
which deserves our crossing
tomorrow we could return to fiction

perhaps that romantic apocalyptic
landscape we’ve all set our eye upon
but today let us swing shut each portal
each one snugly in its frame

we clamp closed each drip line that fed us
each one a faerie drug of deep reservoir

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Corbett Buchly’s poems have appeared in more than 30 journals, including Dream Catcher, SLAB, Rio Grande Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Barrow Street. He is an alumnus of Texas Christian University and the professional writing program at the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Northeast Texas with his wife and two sons. You can find him online at buchly.com.

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