CREEK ROAD GANG
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Barbara Fryrear: 2 Poems
copyright 2010
Tel Tales, the Pack Rat
In the corners of my house I've crammed
old chopsticks, kitchen knives, chafing dishes,
Christmas ornaments hand-made now broken,
journals, letters, poems,
unlabeled photographs, projects unfinished,
paint tubes, and catalogs,
the lot fit for some
archaeology of the trivial,
an abandoned city on which my days are built.
Snail, I carry whole histories with me,
inch by tardy inch.
Earthworm, I pass through my own castings,
re-casting as I go.
Coral, I build on dead accumulations
and harbor life there.
The End
I'm afraid to touch
the grey soft waxwing
flash of scarlet, bit of yellow
on the slab.
He met his Armageddon
flung against a sky of glass.
I know what I
fear.
Biographical Note: Barbara Fryrear’s work has been published in Windhover, Duck Soup, CCWriter, several issues of New Texas, The Texas Poetry Calendar and the first issue of Wild Plum. She received the Carl Award for poetry, and is looking for an agent for her novel about ancient Crete. She graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with honors in history from the University of Texas in Austin in 1949. Now a Life Member of the Trinity Writers’ Workshop, Barbara lives on an acre in Irving, Texas, occasionally getting up from the computer to feed the feral cats and birds, trying to keep them sorted out, and looking for her glasses. Some day she will find time to go through her grandmother’s journals and old family letters to which she has fallen heir. See Author Index A-K to find more of Barbara's writing.
In the corners of my house I've crammed
old chopsticks, kitchen knives, chafing dishes,
Christmas ornaments hand-made now broken,
journals, letters, poems,
unlabeled photographs, projects unfinished,
paint tubes, and catalogs,
the lot fit for some
archaeology of the trivial,
an abandoned city on which my days are built.
Snail, I carry whole histories with me,
inch by tardy inch.
Earthworm, I pass through my own castings,
re-casting as I go.
Coral, I build on dead accumulations
and harbor life there.
The End
I'm afraid to touch
the grey soft waxwing
flash of scarlet, bit of yellow
on the slab.
He met his Armageddon
flung against a sky of glass.
I know what I
fear.
Biographical Note: Barbara Fryrear’s work has been published in Windhover, Duck Soup, CCWriter, several issues of New Texas, The Texas Poetry Calendar and the first issue of Wild Plum. She received the Carl Award for poetry, and is looking for an agent for her novel about ancient Crete. She graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with honors in history from the University of Texas in Austin in 1949. Now a Life Member of the Trinity Writers’ Workshop, Barbara lives on an acre in Irving, Texas, occasionally getting up from the computer to feed the feral cats and birds, trying to keep them sorted out, and looking for her glasses. Some day she will find time to go through her grandmother’s journals and old family letters to which she has fallen heir. See Author Index A-K to find more of Barbara's writing.
