“Nocturne,” “Flint Ridge Overlooking the Klamath River,” and “Aubade for Lisa”

“Nocturne,” “Flint Ridge Overlooking the Klamath River,” and “Aubade for Lisa”

Image
Photo by Blair Fraser on Unsplash

Nocturne

The night is a black dress

draped over the arms of a couch, she whispers

stars plucked like cherry blossoms.

A smokey hush fills the room

exploding

Flint Ridge Overlooking the Klamath River

The back of green is sunrise—

 

you rustled our tent, craved alms of damp and pine

and broke into a compass of morning

                    a robin’s soprano trill, shrill

                                        a bluejay’s tenor, harp

                                                           a kingfisher’s alto, bass

 

of the Spotted Owl asks “who?

                   who are you, who

                                       enters this forest deep,

                                                         who are you, who

                                       will not let me sleep?”

 

It was my grandfather who

                    centuries ago trembled on windy nights

                                           when stove warm flutes bansheed, who

                                                                then traded his plough for pickaxes, turning water

                                                                 into mineshafts and mineral rights.

 

Now human voices who inherited grandfather’s concrete reverberate

across this still and silent spruce swept land                       echoing

                   the axe-heavy frontiersmen who skinned red                      redwood

                                       and pine at the Klamath’s bloodied mouth.

 

Soon we will lose even this moment. I kissed your strawberry hair,

closed the sky from your eyes, and traced black veins ferrying nightshade

across your breasts. The never-ending circle of needles and damp fell

on a broken compass. I still search for you, not knowing who you are anymore.

 

I walk deeper into the forest and gaze towards my campsite,

from the rear margins of the forest, and I am hardly present

I no longer know who I am,

 

dissolved into forgotten spaces.

                     Unanswered, the Spotted Owl

                                            flies away.

Aubade for Lisa

Brown hair black hair in full moon sleep.

On your right shoulder I trace a cherry tree tattoo

blossoms into heat-shaped

stone fruit. Between your shoulders your father’s surfboard,

I trace from memory its angel wings.

We danced to big band swing off the shoulder of the Hornet

painted seascapes on our knees at Big Sur under protection

of Orion and stone tides. I watched your eyes drink deep the sea.

You watched me swallow the tides.

We drank deep each other to water our rose garden where French lace, silks,

and Alexandrine thorns pricked hand and thigh.

But the first dawn rose promising to grow stone into shelter

shelter into sanctuary, sanctuary into home.

Under full moon light I kissed your hand, the black

nail polish of yesterweek flaked and imperfect, like your hair in the morning

twinged with youthful grey and your eyes half shut under bedroom lights rage against

the morning light.

When the dawn comes tonight will be a memory too.

A new day has begun.

I woke alone with strands of black cherry hair

and chamomile rose, lapsang oolong perfumed in my sheets

I never knew it’d be so bitter

to be alone,

alone, and without you—

About the Author

Nick Vasquez

Poet, flamenco player, and hiker, Nick Vasquez lives in the liminal space between redwood forest and urban civilization in northern California. He is a reader at Frontier Poetry, and the founder and lead editor of Grey Hands Literary Magazine, a writing magazine and writing mentorship program for foster youth. His poems have been published in WildSounds, Toyon Literary Magazine, and The Write Launch. He enjoys baking, waltz dancing, and giving ear scratches to his cat.