Poems by John Hillman

Corona Bailey

When Corona Bailey was young she thought
To play the saxophone.
Now she boils in Monday’s kitchen
Sunday’s chicken bone.

Should a neighbor’s whistle
Remind her of brass and keys,
Well, she has a brass ashtray,
And apartment keys can please.

And what of the dreamt-of tune
That fluttered and flew like a moth?
Corona Bailey will tell you
She’s settled for sounds of broth.

Interior Lighting – The 1987 Muse Anthology

Windowshed

During rain the water windows shed
Puddles on the outside sills, brims over, falls,
Dripping past brick and mortar of our walls
To puddle garden earth. Our tulips, red,
Shed water also, and your scarfless head
Shines with rainwater. Here, the gutter fails
To channel rainfall and its water spills
In drips and splashes gardenward. These beds

Are pooled with Sunday rain. Around the base
Of every tulip stands a little pool,
A mirror for leaves and stem. Above your head
The gutter drips. You turn your morning face
To the day’s wind, grass-stirring, fresh, and cool;
Close by behind drips splashing windowshed.

Interior Lighting – The 1989 Muse Anthology

Song

O’ laughing lilting lunatic spring,
When’s the end to snow?
Tell me, when will the robin wing,
When will the crocus show?
When will the water from the thaw
Rush drainward down the street,
And when will the crow’s cold creaking caw
Share air with songs more sweet?
When will the earth refuse the frost
In favor of the dew?
O’ laughing lilting lunatic Spring,
Whatever’s keeping you?

Interior Lighting – 1990 Muse Anthology

Spring Rain

lies shining dimly on
The concrete patios,
The nourishing water drawn
To lie where nothing grows.

But here among the blades
Of March’s stirring grass
The droplets curse the blades
To move through earth and pass

Worm, grub, and … sleeping seed,
Germinal in the black:
The promised life I need:
All wonder to sprout back.

Interior Lighting – 1990 Muse Anthology

Harness

Some of us move more comfortably in harness,
Enjoy the sure restriction lent by bridle,
Know when to arch our necks and when to sidle,
Moving against the curbing, clopping paving,
Champing the bit yet rocking with the laving
Sweat on our sides, more comfortable in harness.

Interior Lighting – The 1991 Muse Anthology

Untitled

This
                    gray haired man who
doesn’t like his work,
this water meter reader who
comes with pencil and blue papers,
visits my basement briefly,
wishes me grudgingly a good day,
will
                    probably many water meters later
                    go home to empty walls
poor couch
Mechanix Illustrated
cigarettes
and
as many cups of instant coffee
as his stomach will allow.

Interior Lighting – The 1992 Muse Anthology

Visit

years ago,
before the cataracts
                    the loose stair runner
                                                                                the fall,
she came to us
from Oklahoma
her dress a bright cotton garden
          cloth flowers in her hamlet
                    the cameo brooch bright on her bosom
her brown eyes bright behind glasses,
and we ran to her with hugs smiles and kisses.

today
we sit
in cold nursing home chairs,
afraid
of clouded eyes
and sallow skin.

Infinity Limited – Autumn 1993

Ducks

Still in the lake,
Smooth and white,
Calmly they take
Their rest in the light.

Cloud shadows form over
The ripples diffusion
The two birds cower,
And lose their illusion,

Two strips of cellophane
That, caught in water,
Cannot, in sun again
Seems birds later.

Poetry Break Journal – Spring 1994

Nursery Rhyme

Day nurse in the kitchen
    Starts the day shift’s coffee.
Woman in a corner
    Pulls the air like taffy.

    Nurse’s aide in aqua
        Checks that we’re all up
        The girl from A-5’s talking
To a paper cup.

    Orderly at my table
        Stops me and is proud
He’s caught me hallucinating;
    Reading poems aloud.

Poetry Break Journal – Spring 1994

April 4, 1972

he felt with his finger
an irregular spot where his varnish was gone
from the table top
where she picked up her glass
to sip soda
a wet ring remained on the table
she set her glass down
a small glass a child’s glass of Coke
and returned to her coloring book
he sighed
she colored furiously
ignoring lines breaking crayons tearing the page
and threw the book aside
looking up at him
“mommy’s not coming back, is she?”
he pulled the creased paper from his pocket
spread it on the table
and again read it silently
“No.”

Maryland Poetry Review – Spring/Summer 1995

The Sunflower Necklace

Because you would insist on beads,
I plied a needle half the night
In my room by candlelight,
Drawing a thread through sunflower seeds.

I worked late in my ill-lit chamber.
The seeds I strung were all we had –
And now you complain and will be sad,
Because they are not the wanted amber.

What good would amber do you here?
You’d surely snap the cord and lose
The pretty trifles you would choose.
Now, wear this seed chain without fear.

For, if my needle was not too fierce,
When you should chance to break the cord
And lose its burden in the yard,
Seedlings may choose the earth to pierce

And later lift above the weeds
Sunflower blossoms in the sun,
And in the center of every one,
Another year’s supply of beads.

Mobius – Fall-Winter 1995

Morning

The sky clouds, darkens, grays toward rain.
We two are silent in this house.
You iron the plain white cotton blouse.
After the sleeve, you stand the iron
And seem to free a hurting lash
From under your eyelid. You return
To ironing, finish, fold the blouse.
And set it aside – the last of the wash

Your ironing done, you yet remain
Beside the ironing board, your mouse-
brown hair stirred by wind entering the house
Through an open window. You watch the rain.

The Musing Place – Vol. X – 1996

Escapist

The clouds fill the hot sky and gray,
Are domed above the earth. A bray
Of wind begins; beginning rain
Leaves drops upon the upstairs pane.

Three boys play baseball in the street.
The smallest runs on sneakered feet
Along the curb and past the drain
To stop an errant ball in rain.

The wind continues its brayed blow.
The leaves it touches turn to show
Their pale reverses to the rain.
Here, on the room side of this pane,

I lean with fingers on the sill
And ask an outer storm to fill
The emptiness left after pain
Vainly I press against the pane.

Interior Lighting – The 1998 Muse Anthology