I walk local roads when I’m afraid,
wonder at others’ schemes, how
they carve their lives, their
rancorous Christmas lights, their wood-
pile lines. Tracks punctuate
the roadside snow—maybe fox.
I don’t know. Today’s the winter solstice.
Tonight Saturn and Jupiter collide.
Galileo saw it too in 1623. In that
shed over there I imagine my father’s
shop windows rimed with ice and
anger. That red house next to it
has the grate in the floor, the wood fire
hissing below, where I pissed once
to spite him. It stank. I never told.
But I’ll quit this carping since I’m far
past my rearing, no longer make
a chew-toy of my father.
My grudge is flinching. All this a burial
of sorts, a reckoning. These nights
I get half drunk remembering.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 23, Issue 5.
Thomas R. Moore’s fourth book of poems, Red Stone Fragments, was published in 2019. His work is represented in more than thirty literary journals and has been broadcast on Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. His poem “How We Built Our House” won a Pushcart Prize and is included in the 2018 Best of the Small Presses Anthology.
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