Eratio


 

 


Four Palimpsests

 

Aaron Bauer

 

 

 

 

Palimpsest of Your Last Smile

 

 

A little over half

is the

hear and see.

 

The Halfway House.  You

 

 

hear the tramps

gathered.

 

You will

 

hollow, wedge yourself

into hearing the jubilant

hundred years.

 

Alpine grass

 

watered by a snow-field.

People

hear drums.

 

So much.

Here was that queer

 

moving abroad.  The humming-bird

 

which performs

to hear.

 

 

 

 

Palimpsest of America

 

 

Use the wings

the red-shafted flicker’s

 

wings.  They should look

 

 

like they have already.

Do not deny your half-brother

 

then, and

 

treasures.

 

 

Here is what you see:

 

numberless farms,

mechanics,

lakes,

mountain chickadees,

acclivities.

 

Mountain sides

are lyrical

 

dresses over

the train’s rigid stanza.

 

 

 

 

Palimpsest of the Singer

 

 

Of

ballad-singers

 

of mountains

 

whose nests I see in stores.

 

He asked

nothing

 

of the pines,

 

 

ravines

 

holding silent

converse as identity forms.

 

Please, please

he blushes

 

 

as blood begins

to drip.

 

 

 

 

Palimpsest of Patriotism

 

 

And many more

 

rest in the

Halfway House.

 

A spot on the ground

 

 

one hundred years

that I decided to sweep up

 

indicating people

 

like a banner, like

a flag, like a false peace

 

hidden beneath an over-arching

 

side of

 

history on the cusp

of memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aaron Bauer is a Pushcart-nominated poet and educator living in Colorado.  He received his MFA from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.  His work has appeared in Prism Review, Inertia, Poemeleon and others.  He has served as Editor for Permafrost and is a Contributing Editor for PoemoftheWeek.org.  His chapbook Colloquy of Sparrows is available from Blue Lyre Press.

 

 


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