Barry Yeoman was educated at Bowling Green State Univ., The Univ. of Cincinnati, and The McGregor School of Antioch Univ., in creative writing, world classics, and the humanities. He is originally from Springfield, Ohio and currently lives in London, Ohio. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming in Red Booth Review, Futures Trading, Danse Macabre, Harbinger Asylum, Red Fez, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Crack the Spine, Burningword Literary Journal, Two Hawks Quarterly, Wilderness House Literary Review, Soundings Review and The Rusty Nail, , among others. You can read more of his published work at:
https://www.redfez.net/member/1168/bookshelf
WINTER MORNING
Crows scrape up
last night's roadkill.
Small animals traverse
the steamy ditches.
The breath of cows
in the meadow at dawn
escapes the flesh
above the icy tufts.
Just when you think
death is slow
the headlines hit.
Spilling hot coffee
you scald yourself
driving to the factory.
All those huge dreams
hibernate now
in the bare landscape.
Trails of jet exhaust
criss-cross
the morning sky.
IN THE WOODS BY THE POND
IN LATE FALL, AT DUSK
With light fading
the last leaves are awake
dreaming of mountains.
Their rhythms are musical
as the flight of butterflies.
Searching for depth,
dictated by the breeze,
they swirl down,
a delicate strike
of water and illusion.
On the cattailed pond
a pair of swans
gliding in unison
search for entrances
into the mist.
Birds, knowing only
that they are birds
hop and twitch,
inquisitive, as baffled
as you or I.
Deer stand in the shadowy webs
of the wooded fringe
dreaming of apples,
browsing on the remnants
of the season;
always moving onward
in love with their own mystery,
cautious, yet unafraid
knowing both sides
of the dark and light.
Soon, the season
turns to the harvest.
The big stowaway
where barns disappear
into the braille of night
and faceless strangers
hitchhike west to Denver.
So many days
erased to numbers,
months of closed doors.
I search old memories
for my birth and my name
and arrested by odds
give my dreams
to a distant voodoo train.
~Barry Yeoman