Fallen Monuments and Faithful Love
Nature is delicate. Lies are persistent. Love is steadfast.
DISCOVERY AT MORGAN CREEK
The deer have been here.
Grass-matted beds, both
fawn-small and rack-fuzzed,
tonight hold the herd.
The very new and
newly old crouch near
the muddy storm-fed
creek. Hear their cough-call,
see their white twitch-tail.
Deer know you are here,
despite undergrowth
and cicada-buzz,
your one-step-ahead
approach, snake-like wind
to the briar-clear
bank. Touch their warm beds.
Learn from their soft fall
into sleep-rich felt.
THE BRONZE HORSEMAN
who was once thought good, fell into the mud
not far from where the policemen stood.
The soldier’s hard skull cracked, empty inside.
The horse had just been along for the ride.
Brown splashes went everywhere instead of blood–
some on the crowd, some on outnumbered cops.
There were cheers and applause but soon they stopped.
The statue was hauled off and sold for scrap.
A year after the monument’s collapse,
from a clearer blue sky, the hot sun shone.
The clay-baked, unforgiven lies weren’t gone.
THE HUNT
I chased love, as all young men do,
until that chase led me to you.
I was erratic, wild, untrue,
when I chased love as young men do.
But age taught me a thing or two:
the hunt for love just made me blue.
I’m chaste, mostly, and older too,
now that love’s chase led me to you.
About the author
Paul Jones
Paul Jones’ second book of poetry is Something Necessary, from Redhawk Publications. A manuscript of his poems crashed into the moon’s surface in 2019, and another moon shot in February 2024 landed successfully. In 2021, Jones was inducted into the North Carolina State Computer Science Hall of Fame, and in 2024, his poem “Geode” was plagiarized multiple times by the notorious serial offender, John Kucera. Recent work has appeared inHudson Review, Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, as well as in anthologies includingBest American Erotic Poems (1800-Present).
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