The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have R. G. Evans serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2022.
MOON AT DAY
by R.G. Evans
Pulling down the rotten boards
of a swing set no longer loved,
I feel you up there over my shoulder.
I built these swings myself
a dozen years ago. The tilt,
the lurch, my work for sure.
Now I pull it down and you pull too,
eye that couldn’t wait for the night.
The tide in me rises to think
of those unborn children
who might have made me keep
these posts from falling apart.
A little paint. A little patch.
Maybe you’re one of them,
looking down on me now
as I go about my best work:
destruction. Only one of you there,
precocious, ignoring bedtime.
Where’s the other?
Maybe Halley’s Comet, silver sibling,
running wild across the heavens,
not to return till I’m most surely gone.
These boards are full of rusty nails.
My knees creak like the gallows.
My daughter is sealed away in her room
writing stories that don’t include me.
Only you can see me wipe my eyes
that burn in the lowering sun.
Only you have the grace to linger
as sky gives way to sky, empty blue
to a black freckled with impossible light.
--from Imagine Sisyphus Happy, Kelsay Books, 2020
Two lines from the Kris Kristofferson song “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down”-- In the park I saw a daddy / With a laughin' little girl who he was swingin'—never fails to stir melancholy feelings when I hear it. “Daddy” instead of “father,” the girl is “laughin’” and “swingin’”—a moment of innocence the song’s persona knows is only temporary. I felt a similar melancholy when I disassembled the swing set I built for my daughter once she’d outgrown it. And the full moon high in the clear, blue, daytime sky has always given me pause, something out of time, there where it doesn’t belong. Add a dash of family tragedy, and this month’s Mad Poets poem was born.
R.G. Evans’s books include Overtipping the Ferryman (Aldrich Poetry Press Prize), The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His original songs were featured in the poetry documentaries All That Lies Between Us and Unburying Malcolm Miller, and his collection of original songs, Sweet Old Life, is available on most streaming platforms. Evans teaches creative writing at Rowan University. Website: www.rgevanswriter.com