1

The hill
steals lightning,
sees Boston stand up
after catching a haymaker,
This morning caught geese
like runaway shoes, tongue screech,
traffic cop calls and winter
ticket stub lost in a pocket;
has mirrors of yesterday's thighs
the moon of the seventh of July
of our lord of 'Forty-five
touched with its butter,
shows her inclined to me
and tilt of the hill.
Her thighs still count the thrust.
 

2

The cops
broke up a card game
on the left shoulder, toward the river
and West Lynn, in 'Thirty-nine;
the pot's never surfaced.
Now a specter in tight pants
sells angel dust, gives
green stamps.
Has new options on street war:
use hammers, screwdrivers, no sunlight.
Night kisses the hill with lonely.
Do not be lured there.
No pig in a poke.
 

3

Has anyone seen
Frank Parkinson lately,
meant to die outside Tobruk
in the mutilating horrors of the sands,
but didn't? Hangs on the hill
like cloud root, spills images,
has literate left hand, flies
with the awesome geese.
Oh, Frankie!
 

4

Throws hill shadow
ominous as dice toss;
a family's left a photograph
in a friend's scrapbook
in a trunk in a cellar
in the thrown shadow.
Nothing else. No dandruff.
No acne. No evidence of being.
Gone off the waterfall of Time.
Nobody remembers they were here
halfway up the hill once.
 

5

Lone blue goose,
tandemless, no fore
and aft, plunges over,
cries high noon of search,
drags feathers, drops
the quick flutter
of a shadow.
Poem stops.
Starts.
 

6

Hill has transport.
Pieces left in Hwachon Valley
in the Iron Triangle. In Verdun.
On the Ho Chi Min Trail. Waters
near the Marshall Islands. Sitka.
In flecks of blood in Walpole cell.
On the wall of a cave in the Tetons.
An unmarked grave in a dead town in Iowa.
Almost, near Tobruk. Parkie's too tough
for Krauts, shrapnel's conversion to flesh,
booze, cancer, rolled over cars giving off
ribald laughter, snowstorms going like
wild pinball games, bad dreams
with real smells a listener
can touch; all of them,
almost.

The blue goose
throws down a quick shadow.
I hear the high noon call
at night.
 

7

The terrors near Tobruk
are as hard to shake as nicknames.
Beaver. 39 Stone. Maude's Jake.
Sinagna. Dropkick. Snakeeyes.
Automatic Brown. The Indian,
who fell near Tobruk, arose,
moved the stone, gave his
voice to the blue goose.
High noon call at night.

He gave up his pain forever;
how he lives so long
the hill sings.
 

8

Steals lightning. Spies on
Boston, Hancock's glass face.
Sees the ocean die close in-shore.
Gives up the moon. Throws trees down
to hungry flame. Wears the shadow
of the blue goose.

Watches my poem stop.

Copyright © 2002 Tom Sheehan
All rights reserved

About the Author

       Tom Sheehan has been cited with a Silver Rose Award for short story excellence by American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) for "The Man Who Hid Music" in New Works Review; nominated for a Pushcart XXVII by The Paumanok Review; nominated for inclusion in The Zine Yearbook and e-2-Ink and won Eastoftheweb's 2002 nonfiction competition. He has work in/coming in 3am Magazine (novel), AJoP, The Paumanok Review, Literary Potpourri, Melange, Free Zone Quarterly, Split Shot, Drunk Duck, Slow Trains, Burning Word, Stirring, Eclectica, Arbutus, Dakota House, Samsara, Carnelian, Red River, Comrade, Electric Acorn, Fiction Warehouse and Duct Tape Press.

      His novel, "Vigilantes East," has been issued by Publish America and is available on Amazon.com and B&N.com. He is the co-editor of the sold-out issue, "A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900-2000," a 452-page historical and nostalgic look at his hometown of Saugus, MA, 14 miles north of Boston. He and the committee borrowed $60,000 to have books printed and paid off the loan five weeks after receipt of the books. A second printing is fast being sold out. All proceeds go to Saugus High School scholarships.

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