John Poch
Pennilessly
Honey, we have a little
money. Your old coat might
fight cold, and I know
your lakeside hope can
crystallize like diamonds
held up to old light longing
in prongs of white gold.
Your mind is what the jasmine
buys the wind. A quality.
The want behind the sunset dying cries.
Might money know the size of time?
We’ll never know.
I am a man under moonlight,
who smiles, who walks with a head high
stack of books, now stopping
to put them down and pick up a coin
of moonlight. Which is still a coin
whose only prize is the eyes.
I risk it. I abandon for art’s sake
the books like a new altar
as if I could give to God
my love of libraries.
And I do, I pay my payment,
my interest of words
on loan from the dead.
Arise, and let’s go north.
The sky roads seem unending.
Disaster may be far, but now
to you I will our memories
of those abandoned birdhouses
in the field above the lake.
We may one day walk there again
picking wild strawberries
enraptured as our children were
that spring practicing with laughter
the disaster plan, clattering
the emergency ladder. And we’ll be ready
for the morning of the end of days.
John Poch is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Grace College. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, and other journals. His forthcoming book is Dark Cathedral (Slant 2025).
Return to September 2024 Edition
Honey, we have a little
money. Your old coat might
fight cold, and I know
your lakeside hope can
crystallize like diamonds
held up to old light longing
in prongs of white gold.
Your mind is what the jasmine
buys the wind. A quality.
The want behind the sunset dying cries.
Might money know the size of time?
We’ll never know.
I am a man under moonlight,
who smiles, who walks with a head high
stack of books, now stopping
to put them down and pick up a coin
of moonlight. Which is still a coin
whose only prize is the eyes.
I risk it. I abandon for art’s sake
the books like a new altar
as if I could give to God
my love of libraries.
And I do, I pay my payment,
my interest of words
on loan from the dead.
Arise, and let’s go north.
The sky roads seem unending.
Disaster may be far, but now
to you I will our memories
of those abandoned birdhouses
in the field above the lake.
We may one day walk there again
picking wild strawberries
enraptured as our children were
that spring practicing with laughter
the disaster plan, clattering
the emergency ladder. And we’ll be ready
for the morning of the end of days.
John Poch is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Grace College. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, and other journals. His forthcoming book is Dark Cathedral (Slant 2025).
Return to September 2024 Edition