Sample Poems by Berwyn Moore

The Game Lords
        They are the immortal renewers of substance —
        the force behind and above animate nature.
                   Loren Eiseley, “The Dance of the Frogs”


1.    Labrador

Winter, and the Naskapi hide
under Caribou skins and read signs
in the bones of eaten bear. From inside
their tents, they pray to the game lords,
spirits that awaken when the cold breaks
with spring, wet with the songs of frogs.

Their tents shake, their voices unite
with the frog chants, an invocation
for the pounding of hooves, for fish
or fur. They are not silent until morning.


2.    Pennsylvania

Lanterns pour their pale light
across a wharf, half-built over
a marsh that swells and sings
with frogs luring their mates.

A lone scientist counts the trills,
measures tones and grunts,
uses his instruments to tap
the mysteries of Naskapi lore.

Curiosity pulls him to the wharf
where his shadow spawns a line of men
alongside him, bounding heel-toe,
heel-toe from one lantern to the next.

He hears the frogs through the mist,
a chorus of trills called by the water.
Their shadows leer up beside him, giants
leaping to the pulse of the night in the wild
wetness of spring, their rhythm driving him
to leap, to keep pace, his shadow changing—
a half-man charging into the cacophony
of the swamp to become one of them—
until the terror that is alone human calls
out to the light on the wharf, shattering
the frenzy into silence.


3.    The Explorers Club

A brandy, a cheery fire, chats here
and there of travels and studies,
but he keeps to himself, remembering
that instant between desire and fear,
between the sacred shape of history
and the final leap into darkness,
that instant when knowledge falls
away like cracked teeth.

It is the question of choice, he says,
his batrachian hand hidden in a black glove—
the only proof.

He knows why the Naskapi read
their dreams in bones and wait
for the welcome hush of winter.

A Midsummer Night’s Deconstruction of
Blame

            “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”    
                Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream


At midnight, carpenters renovate my bedroom,
pounding ten-penny nails with a single stroke

while chanting Jubilate Deo. You return
from the party with prostitutes, sequined and oily,

who tuck pornographic word games inside
the pages of Grimm's Fairy Tales while my parents

sleep downstairs. You beg me to join your frolicking,
but I flee to my sister’s room where I find her sleeping

under umbrella palms and maidenhair ferns, peace
lilies and passion flowers. When I wake her up,

she’s not surprised at the jungle sprouting around her.  
Back in my room, we try to shoo the prostitutes away

when we hear metal clanking outside. From the window,
we see the carpenters spreading metal remnants

from the basement on the lawn—rusted shears,
a broken shovel, two bicycle rims, and a WWII helmet,

the porch light casting shadows behind them
like gremlins. We rush back to my sister’s room,

overtaken with ferns and tangled vines, where you
and the prostitutes, quiet now, sit on the floor watching

a spindly spider battle a fist-size wasp, its silvery stinger
unrelenting until the spider weakens with a severed leg.

I glare at you, knowing this chaos is your doing,  
but as I open the door, the shriveled husk of the wasp

swirls away, its broken wings dissipating like dust,
and the spider begins spinning a new web, her abdomen

pulsating with gold light. The weary prostitutes
collect their games and file out of the house, you

and the carpenters trailing pathetically behind them,
your arms weighed down with useless basement booty.  

I hear my parents stirring in their room, the morning
light just petting their door, casting away the night

and the noise, invoking the day’s unmarked calm.

Straw

        “That he was pleased when he could take up a straw
        from the ground for the love of God... .”
                Conversations with Brother Lawrence


bunched and tied, still
damp from the threshing floor

dried barley, wheat and rye
grain-straw flattened with hoof

packed tight into burlap, once
beneath swaddling sheets

fiber woven into mats pulling
dirt from our feet or on a

broom end, blunt-cut
for an even sweep, straw

braided strand over strand, baskets
water-tight for babies or church offerings

therapy for heartbroken hands
straw hats and straw-pulp boards

straw cooked for carbon, phenol oil and pitch
straw spun to gold

strawberry, red and sweet
straw worm, straw man

straw house, mud-patched against the wind
straw, smelling of earth and dung

straw worm, straw man, straw
woman with hair the color                                        

of straw, arms and legs stuffed
with straw cut and braided tight

straw woman, spinning each strand to gold
quiet and sure in the night.