The Way Love Finds You
Music, mystery, and magic are everywhere: just ask this mystic Southern poet.
RED COCKADED WOODPECKER
This bird seeks out the ruined heart
of tall pines. Trees that take a long
time to set down roots before they work
on what will be their crowns. Trees that
reach out like high school cheerleaders.
Each limb pompommed with long needles—
limbs that know how to move with the wind,
limbs that rarely know the weight of snow.
None of that can protect their red hearts.
Something worms its way past the bark,
the way rust finds a way through armor,
the way trust is lost between lovers.
This bird knows how to find its way in
when hearts are tender, while resin
can still flow, where homes can be built
for nests where families will be raised.
Its work starts with failure at the heart.
VERY NEAR A GRAVEYARD IN HILLSBOROUGH, NC
The living, tonight, are at home.
The dead, marked by tilting stones,
lie still in their respected beds.
In between, where no one goes,
yew branches the ground
like dirty snow. Rabbits use
the dark to confound the fox.
In this liminal refuge,
these bare twigs and piles of rocks,
these tossed-out bits of mayhem,
like crows, call me to join them,
to find shelter in wildness—
the marginal—and be blessed.
Altar Call
If I had not gone up, I would have missed my ride.
So it didn’t take me long to decide to join in
the soft swaying line of shoe-shined, one-mind mankind.
I became another link in the salvation chain,
unsure if I would be saved and, if so, saved from what—
maybe a bully’s punch in the gut, maybe from lust.
While I feared the first, I was lured by the last.
After all, that’s why I came. Now I forget her name.
I was flattered that she asked me to her church until
her car filled with five other anxious tight-jeaned teens.
Isn’t that the way love finds you? You get drawn in
to the unknown by the promises, smiles, nods and winks.
You never stop to think where the line will lead or end.
Then you kneel at love’s altar and become a man.
About the author
Paul Jones is an inductee of the North Carolina State Computer Science Hall of Fame. Some of his poems crashed into the moon, carried by Israel’sBeresheetlunar lander. His book,Something Wonderful, is available from Redhawk Press.
- Paul Joneshttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/paul-jones/
- Paul Joneshttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/paul-jones/
