Between Trails

Tread me
into warp wood
and the honey strum
of a hill wind

Green kissing gold
falling
in a folk dance

Birch root
Bedfellow
Bearded father

Sing me the gift
of waiting

Grant gills to my memory
that thoughts may breach
with creek moss

And touch the promise
of an August

Meadow edge
Milkweed
Myth-mother

Sift me a fire song
sour sweet
from out the blood
of berry meat

The sun is folding in

Now, trace my path
back
in pumpkin skin.

Sipping Ancestry

Between lacquered roots
and whistling lip of a Cairn glass
phantoms
recently un-tombed
rise and writhe
from a dram of Green Gypsy

Miles of Isles
distilled
smoked
oaths from ghost-fires
twined in tar rope

I envy images

Thistle pricks,
bog breath,
fairy brine,
dragon wings and older things
Time before time

Dwelling on unfortunate names
I drum the music of the knuckle bones

And see their eyes as clear as moon silk

Kaiser, Culloden, Kilkenny, Calypso
and someplace where Coats still matter

I had one grandfather
Shoe-horned into a time unkind to
mystery
barely born but bastard-worn

The mimic of memory
has its formula:
germination
veneration
imitation
tracing fault lines with a sun dial
looking beyond
to window faces
fogged, smogged, and smeared

clotted knots in milk-water
paper smiles roll and smolder

Clutching at mercury and make-believe
the rest is invention

For on the other side
there is no other side
I wear a name like coffee stains
obvious and inconvenient
a wardrobe of dead ends, or bell-ends

Let nature return
reaching to the few I remember
like me
with divining rods
tugging at husks that will not tear
only there
raw hands find
we are clay and kennings

Dream-meal
measured whole
ground between a mother’s thumb
and her two sons

Where is inheritance hung?
The doctors say
I have “tall lungs”.

Gallery

My Lady ‘wants a walk’, she says
‘I want the poets grave’

She opens the door for a thousand obscurities,
a thousand he-once-was’s,
a hundred leaning arms,
tens of empty vows,
and a smile
if the sun
stays quiet

I watch my Lady tread

She eats the air of Gods, while others
wheeze on words
Her lips command-
Etruscan pillars stand

I chew skin with the Ancients

In the parlor
she leans on vellum of a Christian calf
and asks
‘Where have they hid the French?’

Eden’s irrigation couldn’t quench the thirst we knew

Leading parched eyes to Gothic alters,
I’ve found an hour to dream in tones
scarlet
leaves a taste like
permanence

My Lady dances with the Revival

And settles into petals
where Impressions leave no less
than themselves

But our day was led astray
by heavy-breathing cataracts
Whistler followed fast
and followed faster
till our song one burden bore-

Modernity

To slither through its mausoleum,
catching shards from fallen spheres,
We lose our taste
for amnesty

Who wouldn’t cringe at an old man’s smile,
to learn your dreams are timed?

To the sea I scream with open eyes
Why must we bleed for constancy?

She brings me back
She breathes the patterns against a broken canvas

My Lady’s eyes

She meets the storm in smirks and whispers

My Lady’s eyes

The reaching walls and wide hours
splinter
to a violent truth
There are no lies in the Baroque

My Lady’s eyes

We leave with our tickets.

Jonathan Heidenreich is a classical actor, director, and Secondary English educator. Jonathan is the founder and executive director of the Pittsburgh Shakespearean theatre co. 'Food for Groundlings. He has been writing poetry for nearly 10 years.