Two poems by R.T. Castleberry

Distant Is The Morning

Rain dries on a windy street.

Heron skulks the horizon.

Never trust a Capricorn’s word

until you know how it falls to his favor.

Leaves pile before me in skittering sweeps.

Desert dust scrapes

cirrus crystals from the sky,

drains celebration Spring to drudgery.

Beggar’s coins accumulate in my pocket,

like sirens at a fire.

Before I sleep, I worry at

another illness collapse.

When I dream, it’s of dirty water

rising beneath the door,

dirty shirt cuffs extended for arrest.

Bear Me Up

Under the monthly arc

of an ocean moon,

ghost sirens of failing ships,

I don’t sleep well on this island.

Weaving room to room,

I read 2 books at a time,

subjects: the outcast comic,

assassinations in Rome, 1932.

Wasting hours, I treat time

with crawls through email,

cynical sniping online.

At my desk making a list, it seems

I’ve missed or lost or tossed

items I’ll need.

Salt wind lifts the curtains

at an open window.

Ten o’clock becomes four a.m.,

becomes burdens snared like

wreckage against a reef,

blot of ashes returning on the waves.

R.T. Castleberry, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has work in Steam Ticket, Vita Brevis, As It Ought To Be, Trajectory, Silk Road, StepAway, and BigCityLit. Internationally, he's had poetry published in Canada, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, New Zealand, Portugal, the Philippines and Antarctica. His poetry has appeared in the anthologies: Travois-An Anthology of Texas Poetry, TimeSlice, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and Level Land: Poetry For and About the I35 Corridor. He lives and writes in Houston, Texas.