Mount Ne

          I sit in an ampitheatre and listen to you
          Hearbing you clearly through an acoustic trick
          You are standing fifty feet away and murmuring
          I’d rather not hear it because you are drunk and
          saying we should go our separate ways
          drunk is honest the old saying saws at my
          psychic teeth and sets me on edge the edge
          of my crumbling concrete seat this old
          circular Greek-looking ampitheatre in
          Mont Ne where we have come to be
          dismayed or amazed or maybe razed like
          a building served its use its time no longer
          wanted wasting space and facing
          demolition. Is that us? We were built in
          frenzy and much applause and cornerstoned
          with a time capsule that is past its
          due date? Is that it? Did just time run out?
          Where is timelessness? Did theories
          change? Where have I been in the mean
          time, the golden mean of the ideal? WTF?
          Mont Ne has a history, like us, of failure.
          It was built with hope and crazy polarity
          and dreams. And now the ruins offer
          some solace, some mystery still, can’t we
          make do with that you know like the
          Aztec Pyramids? This place had splendor
          once now splintered by time HEY! I yell
          to hear the echo and a crane rises slowly
          like a C-130 overloaded, from the water
          they sank Mont Ne in like Atlantis or Mu
          obliterating the canals and tracks and
          ruins of the great lodge the dreams of
          that man not quite covered by time and
          flood and rerouted rivers. Maybe my
          dreams will rise like a heavier than air
          crane over the fingers of dead trees.

Stork Still Crane

          Ninety-five in the shade
          The crane stands stork still
          no breeze ripples her mirror
          of deadly cyan and clouds
          I whistle the dogs back softly
          no need to force her up to
          shift and seek another pond,
          struggle and scuffle herself
          into the air lift that density
          against gravity until her
          glide and symmetry take
          my breath and she floats
          over the ridge and lights like
          breath itself at first light as
          souls alight and disappear
          with few traces we squint to
          see I retrace steps she turns
          her swordbill just a bit and
          scythes downward into the
          simmer breaking glass and
          water, a panfish captured
          gone in a flash and she is
          still again eggs hidden and
          I back away slowly turn to
          see my dogs waiting,
          honoring my point
          my stealth, my bated
          circumspection my
          very breath held
          like smoke.

Guinotte Wise fixed his soffits with money from his short story collection Night Train, Cold Beer (Pecan Grove Press, 2013). His stories, essays and poems have appeared in numerous literary reviews including Atticus, the MacGuffin, Shotgun Honey, and Best New Writers Anthology 2015. He lives in Resume Speed, Kansas; his wife has an honest job in the city, and drives 100 miles a day to keep it.

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