Upriver (Day 352)

They say fondness 

makes the heart 

grow absent.

Well, you’re miles away 

in a driving rain,   

telling me you’re sorry 

from the middle 

of a desert, 

under a flotilla 

of amethyst clouds.

Never again will I let on 

that I love you—

you never believed me

when I said it out loud.

You built your dam upriver 

from my valley, and 

that water’s not going 

to trickle down again.

The shadows grow longer 

even earlier now, and 

we’ll never be as green 

as we were back then.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Skeeze via Pixabay

It's Like That (Day 264)

It isn’t a slow song that gets to me, 

but the shuffle of boots across

a sawdust floor, dry as august 

weeds, screen door banging against 

the frame from time to time, 

red dust coating on the chairs. 

It’s the way a certain singer’s voice 

breaks just there, at the edge of that 

single note, and how the steel guitar 

falls away from the band to sway 

through a slow swing solo. 

The beer is just okay. The crowd, 

rough as brand new, 

never-been-washed 501s.

But that boy, with the silver band 

around the crown of his dark brown hat? 

The way his eyes darken as he plays, 

and the skin at the nape of my neck 

tingles in anticipation? He brings me 

back, and back again.

It’s like the shuffle of bare feet on 

a wide-plank kitchen floor, the scent of 

strong coffee brewing on the frost-bitten 

edge of a long autumn morning. It’s like 

the sunlight glazing each falling leaf 

against the backdrop of a cedar forest, 

so the trees seem to be raining fire. 

Yeah. It’s like that.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Photo: Charles C Pierce, Inside the Yellow Aster Saloon, Randsburg, California, ca.1900