“Half-Staff,” and other poems, Terry Belew.
Half-Staff
Which influencer
died and created
this malaise,
which city endured
a gunman?
The flags look
dead as the crowns
of two oaks
that spent years
choking one another,
braided
together like rope.
_____
The Anatomy of Forgiveness
I give nothing to nature, so I’ve bought bees
to keep in my backyard—their tiny lives
offer meaning to mine, will clear the air
of the errors I’ve made since being born.
Thinking of nature reminds me to forgive
faults, because bees are faultless, and to sow
seed in the ground: squash and melons, peppers, so
all summer I can eat fruit and bloom while the bees
harvest, build, clean, feed, and die, forgiving
through sacrifice. I’ve spent too much time simply living
through cold and disease, fixating on being reborn
and forgiven, breathing a flood of clean air.
I’ve spent too much time deciding how much air
I wasted last year, how much life needs resewing
to correct the wreck brought forth by being born
to consume. I know nothing, but the bees
are an escape because keeping something small alive
is simple. They’re like faith taking hold to forgive
living like a storm, an existence as forgiving
as flood water. I know nothing, but breaths of air
are another escape, the automatic constant of living
taking a toll from the dirt I live in, the dirt I sow
and mold to suit my want. I’ve never thought to be
anything but a cold life, continually reborn
as a disease—I live like an airborne
plaque infecting the ground around me, forgiving
forests with a series of machines. I want to be
like rain, vital to tough ground and calm air,
offer more than just the constant sowing
of calamity, more than the endless parade of living
with excess massing around me. I want to keep alive
something small, something which had been born
with a purpose other than to consume so
I can atone for my existence, offer forgiveness
rather than continue living as wasted air
while I devour my surroundings. Let’s just say the bees
will sow a series of waxing sinew, offer life
back into being, as they are born and reborn
in the forgiveness of the bright spring air.
____
Shudder
Easy enough to ignore
on the horizon line,
are the blinking strobes
beaming down
data so omniscience
can be pulled from pockets,
or are they unexplained aerial
phenomena loitering
just above the atmosphere?
Jets take off like gunshots
around here, making it easy
to imagine a fighter
giving chase to a discoid
spaceship, Google
alien sightings, evidence.
I’ve made a habit
of lying about memories,
but as a child,
truly, I looked out a window
and saw a swirling circle
of brilliant, unnatural
light, then it fluttered
and was gone.
Now every morning
I flinch after loud noises,
a missed call
or unanswered text, assume
ruin because of routines,
imagine a bomb
dropping two states away
while families eat
breakfast grits and oranges,
their Styrofoam plates boiling.
Terry Belew lives in rural Missouri. His debut collection, The Deep Blue of Neptune, won the 2024 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Kent State University Press. He received his MFA from University of Nebraska-Omaha, where he won the 2022 and 2023 Helen W. Kenefick Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Recent work can be found in journals such as Meridian, Southern Humanities Review, Storm Cellar, Gulf Stream, and Tar River Poetry, among many others.