To the Artist's Page                To our home page

To Royce Sykes's previous piece     To Royce Sykes's next piece

Signs and/or Wonders

Young rabbit dodges past me, skirts
crawdad hole, then dives into bushes 
beside a high stone wall, I follow, 
after the light turns green, avoid the mud 
beside a leaking fire hydrant, then trot
into the Public Library's main branch.
 
A hawk sails slowly from out of the west, 
skimming the foliage ocean we call Forest 
Park, then glides north along Kingshighway 
to hunt or roost among abandoned tenements
resembling pictures of Dresden after WWII.
I top off my tank and drive the other way.
 
Deer are growing fat again I see as they 
graze sweet spring grasses along a slope.
Three does, I think, wondering where their
buck might be when some fool in front of me
lays on the horn before exiting Highway 40
and disappearing up the Boone's Crossing ramp.
 
One, then another, and yet a third coyote
yaps, different sounds from the dog whose
scream of pain abruptly shreds the night;
bags of mall merchandise--shoes and shirt, 
a CD-rustle as I hang a left at the corner,
roll on through slumbering Chesterfield.
 
Breeze teases steam from coffee as I listen
to crows greeting the dawn and each other; is
it by mystic bent or hidden fears-if these 
are not somehow the same-I sometimes read
too deeply for portents and mysteries in 
wonders which are not signs, but merely are?

To the top of this page