“from pillar to post” by Johnny Coley

For Tomas

  (1)
...the softer deeper brushstrokes of the
       delicate evergreen. A dog
barking my name.
This world wants
that world. But,

what a world lacks –
sounds ungrammatical –
a world is complete.

If I’m not
part of a world,
but somehow intruded into it or onto it,

or produced from it then separated,
it may be then that it lacks
what I need. But what is missing?

What was missing when I saw
beyond the foggy glass doors, that morning,
the delicate evergreen.

  (2)
From the fog, thick grey and faint winter
     browns,
thick yellow
school bus coming this way,
up the long hill by the golf course.

It seems now that for so long you were
     Approaching,
Filling the sky with your bright warm
     Color,
A very close body, as Mars

From far away Seems to be embracing
Venus -
Then gone.

  (3)
From pillar to post –
you – him - your colors:
skin, hair, eyes –
blown away in movement.
Cold wind.

---

Johnny Coley was born in 1950 in Alexander City, Alabama. He works at the Birmingham Public Library part-time. His published titles, from Kudzu Press, Birmingham, Alabama are Good Luck (1975), No (1976), and Peasant Attitudes towards Art (1984). For many years he has improvised spoken language in performance with Davey Williams and others.