Poetry By T.A. Young

    Matt Callow Flickr CC



​Ether City, Michigan

We spend a lot of time wanting,
But that's not what makes us.
We're all wanting.
Specifics vary, but the gist is the same:
Full stomach, sound sleep,
Someone to be the other part of us.
Less suffering,
More things, more or less.
So that's not it.

We spend a lot of time lost.
I'm not sure if that's it, either.
Some of us know that
Lost ain't so bad
Or so unusual in these parts,
Where the woods are dark
And the moon is clipped
Small and thin
Like a woman who's
Just a wisp

We spend a lot of time gasping for air,
(You've seen the program
About all that junk
Floating around)
All that junk we inject into the air
Like heroin into a blue vein.
All you want
Is to break even.
You can't even remember
What it's like to be high
Anymore;
No point in chasing after it,.
You'll never find it:
You cooked that vein
Long ago.

We spend a lot of time looking back.
Looking forward is one hell of a lot worse:
There's no road,
No signs, no lights.
You fall forward, you land on your face;
Fall backward, you've got some cushioning, some experience with
That direction.
Forward is - near or far -
Where the end is:
Who would want to run in that direction?

We're all groping
With hands and sticks and words
And all we end up finding -
For the duration of a snapshot and a slug of Jack - is
Each other.

Ain't that something?




You Remind Me Of The Rain


You remind me of the rain on a steel-gray day;
A hand touching the damp windowsill,
Distant.
The surface of the bay is black and flat
When the rain stops. One could call it quiescent.
 
What I hear now:
Trees too wet to rustle,
Wind a weak whisper
After so much bluster.

Don't you think I listen for the sounds
At door and window,
For tires slowing
For the final turn on the wet blacktop
Into the forlorn driveway,
Tufts of grass, a weed or two
Pushing through the cracks?
One could call them tenacious, persevering.

No, I suppose not.

You remind me of the rain on a steel gray day;
The sweet wet smell of
Grass and wood and rusting bicycle,
Autumn hiding behind a tree;
One could say sulking.

You remind me of the sun
And the moon and all those things
Missing from the sky
Since the day you took them  
With you.

Mostly though,
You remind me of the rain on that steel gray day.



T.A. Young's short story, "Stooped", was published in The First Line magazine, summer issue 2017. He lives and works in New York City.