Sean Whalen

4.99

is 5 acres, more or less. The less is lost. The more,
I assume, hides infinite doorways, black holes,
buried farmstead secrets.

For thirty years I’ve searched for portals under rocks,
poked fingers into pocket gopher mounds, badger dens,
rotted stumps, looked for underground stars, donned polarized

glasses to catch the telltale glimmer of imperfection
where universes collide. I’ve run my hands along the edges,
lifted turf looking for folds, pockets, coins, jewels, golden hordes
hidden by dwarves or elves whose spells created the cartographic void.

Nothing.

At midnight, under different phases of the moon, I creep
through the grass and along the foundations of barn
and house to glimpse a sliver of silver leaking

from an unattended door leading to the lair of Morlocks,
fairies, or trolls. At noon on calm days I stand in the center
and listen for banquet voices, music, laughter, anything

beyond the slight hum made by the orbiting planets.
Once I caught a whiff of smoke tinged with rosemary,
heather, and sage, but it faded and I stood weeping.

The harder I look the more I know someday it will surprise me.
I’ll be mowing, or on a ladder picking apples, or standing staring at the sun,
and a beckoning void, lined with velvet dark or glittering light,
will open at my feet, and I’ll go. No pack. No rope. Nothing.

.

Trophies

Enter a room full of fatal seconds.
Deer with glittering glass eyes
stare at moist fish
angled in impossible curves

striking at wooden baits,
a bear lurking in the corner
contemplates his own skull,
furs on the wall add faux warmth,

all a vain attempt to capture
the millions of seconds alive.
Wind tugging a beard, trees moaning
in a pre-dawn storm, the prickle

of crawling wood ticks,
watching twin fawns suckle,
every leaf seen to fall,
every dewdrop,

every flake, every step
feeling current swirling
around a billion rocks,
through a trillion grains

of sand, memories
of sparse light
illuminating sworls
of hair, iridescent

scales, the pearled
undersides of clouds,
finding a shed antler
poking through snow.

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Sean Whalen lives near Pilot Mound, Iowa, and enjoys what life close to home has to offer. Recent poems have appeared in Halcyon Days, Last Leaves, Smoky Blue, After Happy Hour, The Ocotillo Review, and Oakwood, and are forthcoming in Unbroken and Thimble.

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