Chris Crittenden - Two Poems

More Stars

he wishes bat wings
were his sinews,
that he could leapfrog time
and skip space.

if only Muses would applaud
in the facets of clouds,
metamorphosing
to hear.

if his mind
could save worthy thoughts
from floods of noise, like an Ark,
but he plods along instead--

a golem of chore,
love’s grim stranger.

to feel is not to be.
to know there are more stars
than choices.
to watch god rise slowly
and turn away.



Durance

the sky thickens
into misunderstandings.
the Theseus of our hope
lost in its maze.
without purity rain comes,
mocking and carving.
it dribbles to form sinews
in a jail of mist.

the rain’s arteries possess us.
we look at each other’s wet fury,
the masques shiny on our skin--
though moments ago
we had prayed until we cried.

it is the night’s doing.
we wear what it heaves,
costumed by its gales.
our faces stream Hellenic,
mutable from a false emotion of water.

we grasp ropes of downpour,
beg to climb steps of lightning.
but the promise never comes; and
the night trends long, dressing us
in every grotesque garb,
every underworld cloak.



Chris Crittenden teaches environmental ethics for the University of Maine and does much of his writing in a hut in a spruce forest. He has recently been published in: Portland Review, Vox Humana, Poetry Friends and Brink Magazine, and blogs as Owl Who Laughs.