1986 graduate of EIU with a BA in English, Patrick Peters lives with his wife, two sons, and a rotating menagerie of dogs, cats, and horses at Whitebridge Farm in Argyle, Texas. He is the Executive Vice President of a software company, and with his wife, Shelley, last year founded Water Press and Media, a small press focusing on Midwestern and Western writers. The press published Bruce Guernsey’s Soldier’s Home, Bob Zordani’s Epileptic’s Song, and Graham Lewis’s Forever Came Today in late 2003. Forthcoming books include Martin Scott’s On Stealing Books, winner of the Water Press and Media First Book Award, and Peggy Hong’s Three Truths and a Lie. “We believe there are many talented, unrecognized writers in the Midwest and West, and many of them have voices that should be in print and known. . . . About these poems – as Richard Hugo said, I know these aren’t the best poems in the world, but they’re the best I can do.” —JDK
My Brothers and I Consider the Soul
The
Koester boys drowned drunk in their car
after caving in a piling on the Wabash River bridge
and my uncle passed in his tomato patch,
his shovel stuck where he started to dig
a hole for his dog he loved like a saint.
My
poor aunt, no fan of frills, buried him
in the hole he started, his dog in the crook of his arm, as if,
when crossing over, a covey of quail might flush,
and the good sense of a dog would lead them
down the right path to Valhalla.
His
garden turned to jungle. Tomatoes and peppers tangled
and the sweet buzz of wasps rose in chorus from the compost,
and those boys, three brothers like us, those boys
rose each evening in the fog from the river bottom.
We heard their voices clacking under the rocks when we swam.
We
were told the soul was a feather, a wafer,
a haphazard moth flitting after the light of God.
With the still sharp spear points we found
in the fallow field on the hill
we splayed the gullets of bluegills
looking
for the inward turn of their shine.
We burned Bullfrogs at the stake
and mapped their oily ascension,
we sank cats in gunny sacks weighted with river rocks,
yielding only foul runoff that sickened our dogs.
That
winter, three skaters disappeared in the black
between ice and water on the Kaskaskia,
a river complicated with drift logs and sands
piled in mounds deep down by the currents.
My mother huddled us, wept
Pray
for their souls trapped there under the ice.
Those little angels. And we did.
Letter
in Mid-Flight
Dear
Shell,
I don’t know where I am.
Over Virginia? Over Ohio, where James Wright
ruined himself on rivers,
but prayed beautifully before eating a pike?
It is almost midnight. I could smooth the land below,
intermittently black, then bursting like a galaxy,
the trees and houses and steeples
bristling against my palms.
I wonder about the isolated lights. A pump station?
A missile silo? I see a lighted ballpark
and try to figure the distance, but it is impossible
from this height.
Last night, in Philadelphia, I walked until I was tired.
A rare Spring snow, and cold – my coat collar up.
An hour or so I walked until my face was numb,
and I was myself again. Do you remember
after we first met? How I would walk
from my house to yours, and in a bag
carry pears to you?
I was He, returning from long at sea.
Where
was I? At some metaphor about distance
and perception. Aah! Never mind.
in the strange bed, but I dreamt about those pears.
Each one ripening on your sill for three days
until it was so soft and sweet I would bite,
and close my eyes, and hum.
A Note to John Morgan
I
am sitting in the sun at a huge window,
drinking coffee. Reading at my leisure.
The
phone has not rung all morning.
John, it appears that the world is one great light.
I must be guilty of something.
But,
for all of my trying this morning,
I cannot think what it is.
Block Island
Come to the porch
and name the colors of the sky for me,
then tell me again about Block Island.
How storms come like fists from the sea
then are gone again before the dogs are afraid.
Tell me the number of steps down to the garden,
the number of steps down to the ocean.
Today, let's let the phone ring and not answer,
leave towels on the floor after our shower.
Much to learn today, much to discover
about this island.
The ferry will recover us in a week.
We've laid in groceries, wine,
my cigars. We are aristocrats today
Honey, and there will be no trouble.
