3 Poems by Matt Larrimore

A Conjuring of Light

plays along the mist

of the overcast summer evening,

golds, blues, and grays

reveal the rutted, furrowed underside

of cloud cover that stretches

horizon

to horizon

curtaining valley and peaks.

The evening breeze

evokes the scent of rain

as people in the crowded

parking lot look up to watch

the breath taking

end-of-day light show in the sky.

For one moment

the cars, plastic bags,

and shopping carts disappear

as the audience is mesmerized. 

Camera phones appear,

pics are taken

never to be seen again.

The spell is broken.

Cat Watching

It seemed an age as we watched the tiger

put a bystander under his claws,

like a scene from the Coliseum,

sending Christians running for exits.

A single shot severed the spinal cord.

The celeb-utantes were the first from the scene

They never get dead no matter their age.

Looked and leered upon, they bring their goons

for show and tell, bang and batter each other.

Many are moonstruck by their beauty.

Their hair silvers like moonlight.

All the greats vie for the key to their images.

They blanch at the thought of age gone by.

At the end of the age they look

for hell’s dark sun, glittering like a jar

of jam, a poisoned dagger poised to drop.

The Skydome, nothing more or less

than a tent, I watched as its age ended,

imagining  spectators running from the blue

lumps of ice that came crashing like satin sheets

of glass dropping to the field below.

[“Cat Watching” previously published in Aproposthearts.com, January 2012]

Florissant

Out of crystalline arching skies crowded with gathering cumulus clouds, the wind blows over this high ancient ground. It flows in waves down the mottled green heaving hills of Florissant. Pressing through the ruddy brown ponderosas, it carries the soft sweet scent of pine. Over the high prairie, once an ancient lake, it bobs the golden yellow crowned white heads of simple mountain flowers. It whirls above the fifteen feet of ashen flow that buries redwoods of stone preserved from time untold to time un-guessed. It whispers something in my ear. Something, I do not understand about finding a place in the world.

[“Florissant” previously published in The Crucible, April 2010]