Poems by Bruce McRae

by Bruce McRae

Unfounded

It's out there on the same plane

as lost luggage or stardust.

A vanished sock or number

carried off in last month's flood.

The random calculus of mobs.

The jaguar's teeth in mire.

The buried scent under the sawgrass.

It's here too, in a corner of a round room.

It was just here, and now it's somewhere else,

a thing that's not worth mentioning.

A thing gone down a drain

only to rise out of the cold lake,

reaching up like a hand,

missing a ring, missing a finger.

Old Glove

The old glove seems miserable, pining for its mate.

The old glove is a thrown tantrum, flung to the floor,

crawling to the farthest corner of a walk-in closet,

that place odd socks and dust-bunnies go when they die.

The old glove's looking more like an old balloon

with the wind knocked out of it, and feeling perfectly useless.

You think it might have sighed, but it's only shivering.

You think of the spider on the cellar's beam,

boney and brittle, its parched innards sucked dry.

The old glove clenches, unclenches, fighting for breath,

gravity winning the struggle, two falls out of three,

tossed down like a defiant gauntlet, for what seemed

a good reason at the time, then hanging on for dear life,

waving goodbye, making a fist of it, cursing the hand.