A Furtive Life
maybe imagined, the knock urgent
late at night, un-refuse-able beneath the fat clouds
when eyes are open to all that is outside—
now the skitter of animals whispering,
crunching in the weeds, revealing
the dark’s labyrinthian plan,
a map for the quiet wind whispering
a poem in the trees. Tonight’s peace
in busyness is the story—immediate,
with no time for ancient squeals,
the ravages of past invasions,
the stench of historic wounds,
say last July’s trauma in the dark
when the boar coon threatened to take a leg.
Often enough we have slept through
our lives, but now the world is bigger
than before, announcing an opinion—
how fitting it is an ionized front comes
over Harmon’s Ridge, liquid smells
insisting on an immense future with a plan
that feels like ours alone. In this temporary
shelter feet reach the floor and soon
enough we are out the door and part of
the wild swirl. With a deep inhale, arms
flung wide catch the first drops that fall.
Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction, and creative non-fiction, writer, and two foster sons. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals.
