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Sheer
(from an Ansel Adams photograph)
Wherever it is,
it looks unclimbable
in winter. Jagged
pieces of its face
pack its base
higher and broader
every year,
water
slipping in,
freezing and ex-
panding,
finally crack-
ing it into
mere aspects of it-
self. One day
the sky will show
everywhere,
a level
walk will suffice
to surmount it --
it having become
the destiny, strictly
horizontal, that awaits us all.
Stand
There are times when to stand in the sun
is to stand in the wind. There are times
when the whole sky is on fire and the earth
is frozen solid. Times there are when your
very hair is electric and your feet two
stones. When to run is out of the question.
When to remain is to combust. When
you are an idea whose time has come,
like a madman approaching in a dream.
At My Autopsy
I'll be the first they won't find
any insides inside of
when they pull away my face
nothing but a sigh will greet them
escaping through the second smile
they just gave me rushing between
their bloodless gloved fingers whistling
along the clean blade of the scalpel
leaving behind the punctured blowup doll
I who have never been seriously wounded
nor the object of much clinical concern
of any sort have always longed to flee
Pete Lee lives with his wife in Ridgecrest, California, a small town in the Mojave
Desert midway between Mount Whitney and Death Valley. His poetry has recently appeared online
at Right Hand Pointing, Unfettered Verse, The Orange Room Review, ken*again, and Antithesis Common.
Email: Pete Lee
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