SUDDENLY, SOMETHING COLD.
So chilled by the shadow of Your cypress
that prickles the hair up the back of my neck
and tempts me with a faith I will not express,
since I fear You; and I, a mere mortal speck,
that could cast my shadow against your Sun
and merge into, perhaps, a greater light,
hope, when my life is done, my life is done
and I’ll never stand in the judgment of your sight.
I squeeze my tensed-up nape to ease my fear
knowing your kindness is always more than cruel
and think my jumpiness means you are near,
—maybe there, in that ring of toxic toadstools,
or in a squirrel chittering with rage,
above a gnawed-out raccoon’s skull and rib cage.
UNMARKED GRAVE
I don’t know where my body is buried.
It left last night without leaving a note.
Something’s wrong with me. I should be worried
and like any wind-blown leaf that floats
above the birdless trees along the curbline
I’m held aloft by the rushing traffic’s song
then land by a store’s “Sale! Closing This Week!” sign
—(there for years). The landlord would not prolong
its lease and I, like that tenant, have vacated
my premises located between Arch and Crown.
Released from all mutual obligations
to which I was silently stipulated,
now without any need to be someone,
I’m free—less than a sound—less than a noun.
AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION
Though blind I hear birds sing that morning comes;
it lights the rustling branches of their roost.
To salute a sun, I only can deduce,
I tap out with tympanic fingers and thumbs
songs whose measured beats make me less lonely
for the lines of poems, I cannot see to write.
My useless eyes see inward only,
discerning dark from dark, not day from night.
I fear the cold ephemeral embrace
of a wind that unfolds withered leaf from leaf
as if it’s a wisdom that could replace
my vision’s death, a blankness beyond all grief.
Sometimes a velvet softness rubs my cheek,
and whispers, “What you want, you’re afraid to seek.”
Photography Credit: Jason Rice
Marc Tretin’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in Bayou Magazine, Bluestem Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Caliban Online, Common Ground Review, Crack the Spine, The Diagram, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Door is a Jar, Faultline, Free State Review, The Griffin, Literary Orphans, Lullwater Review, Mad River Review, The Massachusetts Review, Minetta Review, Moon City Review, The New York Quarterly, The Painted Bride, Paperstream, The Penmen Review, Pennsylvania English, The Saint Ann’s Review, The Round, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Whistling Shade, Ghost Town Literary Magazine, Qwerty Magazine, Vox Poetica, and Willow Review. He was the second runner-up for the Solstice literary magazine poetry prize in 2013. He is the 2015 winner of the Audrey Wasson and Carol Leseure Scholarship in Poetry. His poetry collection, Pink Mattress, has been published by New York Quarterly Press in 2016.
