Robert Lavett Smith- Three Poems

Raised in New Jersey, Robert Lavett Smith has lived since 1987 in San Francisco, where for the past sixteen years he has worked as a Special Education Paraprofessional. He has studied with Charles Simic and the late Galway Kinnell. He is the author of several chapbooks and three full-length poetry collections, the most recent of which is The Widower Considers Candles (Full Court Press, 2014). He has recently been working on an new collection of sonnets—his second foray into the form—which is entitled Sturgeon Moon, and which will hopefully be published by Full Court Press sometime this year.

THE REVEREND IGNEOUS ROCK WATCHES IT RAIN

 

The leaded glass in his window 

only serves to further

blur an already indefinite sky, 

a study in diluted grays,

and a backdrop 

to the seemingly endless downpour. 

It’s been hissing down for weeks, 

clearing only briefly, 

and never for long.

 

Noah must have felt 

something like this,

Igneous muses, 

when the firmament roared 

and rivers began

to overflow their banks 

in those final hours before the deluge. 

The heavens are meant to declare 

the splendor of His handiwork, 

but clearly Our Lord 

is no watercolorist. The monotony

of the smudged light 

that fills these afternoons

has become almost unendurable.

 

And at such times, 

the dead draw near, unbidden. 

They are in Glory, 

the Reverend firmly believes, 

but somehow they’re here too—

as though this weather

has reluctantly granted them 

a backward glance at the lives

they’ve left behind—

and however much he may aspire

to welcome and to comfort them, 

even the Reverend Igneous Rock, 

a man ever steadfast in his faith, 

finds himself burdened

beneath the weight 

of their unimpeachable sadness.

IGNEOUS ROCK PERUSES THE FAMILY ALBUM

 

The oldest photos, daguerreotypes,

depict ancestors whose names

have long been lost, stern shades

in starched collars, whose eyes

shine like the night eyes of beasts,

as though they were caught

in a moment of stunned surprise

as the onrushing years ran them down.

 

In fading snapshots from the fifties,

a girlish Beulah and her late mother—

weighing nearly a thousand pounds between them—

beam for the camera, flowered sun dresses

struggling to restrain their unrepentant girth.

 

It’s a family picnic, or some such.

Almost hidden in a corner of the frame

is a splinter of sunlight snared in the lens,

a ghostly rectangle of bleached brightness

Beulah used to tell the kids

was the Door into Heaven.

 

Polaroids taken in the sixties

have buckled and blistered

on the wide cardboard pages,

hinting those turbulent times

were singed by an unseen fire.

 

The final leaves are empty, forever unfilled.

Everything’s digital nowadays, Igneous muses,

as if all our lives, at the instant they happen,

were already vapor, slipping through our hands.

 

 

 CONCERNING ANGELS

 

Although she is usually loath to be seen

so scandalously under-dressed, Beulah Rock

actually owns—stashed in the back of a drawer

somewhere—a prodigious yellow tee shirt

bearing the slogan I Believe in Angels

in bold blue letters as vivid as a summer sky.

A gift from Myrtle several birthdays ago,

it’s aired out once a year, at the annual picnic.

 

Some insist these celestial messengers are merely

symbolic, but she and the Reverend know better:

Many’s the time, at dusk when the diminished light

transforms fields and trees to a brief, dusty gold,

she’s sure she’s heard them softly singing,

voices concealed behind the rustling leaves

or in the patient refrain of the nearby river.

 

A reassurance, perhaps a benediction,

the words are strange, and vanish instantly,

like fragments of a conversation overheard

and then forgotten an instant before sleep.