James Miller
A Retreat
Yesterday
as we drove
into the southern
mountains
the right horizon
gloomed, silent.
Agave and yucca
waited for rain.
Spout of dust:
the spinning seemed to join
brush in the middle distance
to advancing, stony clouds.
Impossible to catch
the moment
this guest
loosened
and lifted its thumb
from our earth,
thought to draw
itself in.
Grass and Stone
I unloaded the first boxes, lifted them into the new house.
Near sunset the woman next door
stopped to ask three safe questions, waited for three safe answers.
One Friday, I forgot to lower the garage door before going to bed. Next morning,
the woman said, “I saw that you didn’t close up last night. Could be dangerous—
asking for trouble.”
Later that summer, I bought a new camera and spent several weeks
learning its secrets. After lunch, I left the house with the camera hanging
in its harness, bouncing on my chest. I let the camera capture whatever
it could—unmoored, no hands.
I made sandwiches and sat to watch the playback. Flash of green
and brick, truck wheel, azalea branch, leaf-strewn roof. The sounds
were more interesting: hum and roar of cars, lawnmowers,
stiff wind. Spanish from driveway radios, saws droning
in workbench garages.
In those days, I had trouble sleeping. Mostly I stayed up to re-watch
Cronenberg horror from the 80s, or dozed through the neighborhood footage
on my laptop. Sometimes I isolated the audio and listened
to the texture of my own footsteps crossing
from grass to stone,
stone to grass.
James Miller won the Connecticut Poetry Award in 2020. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, Lunch Ticket, The Atlanta Review, 2River, A Minor, Typehouse, Eclectica, Rabid Oak, pioneertown, Juked, North Dakota Quarterly, Yemassee, Phoebe, Mantis, Scoundrel Time, Permafrost, SOFTBLOW and elsewhere.