person David Capps, four poems

David Capps received his PhD in philosophy from University of Connecticut and an MFA in poetry from Southern Connecticut State University. Recently his poems have been featured in Peacock Journal, Mantra Review, Cagibi, among others. He lives in New Haven, CT.

~

Orestes

What if in years
you find yourself
flying as a bird
with one wing

falling as a note
of some far being
who is all-seeing
down to the least

crease you find—
would that be
yourself folded
into one thought

for one thought
less moment, air
you shake off
with a flaunt

of tail feather,
for what awaits?

Our wishes, or
what were ours,
are oars swept
to sea, and small

sky flecks, light
as gulls, points
of possibility,
intersecting

lines that seem
to tell you, and
speak as softly
as might, to let

that Orestes die
who hides inside
whose signs dive
so null and deep.

~

Atrium

At dusk we ate salad:
green leaves enfolded their lives
for us, curled on the tines

of a fork. A cricket you thought
was the ship’s engine sang
beneath your chair.

The song I couldn’t guess
rehearsed in the hull’s massive iron
head, a language to itself.

Evening after evening, the weeks
unbuttoning blue blouses
vanished over sea rifts. Wakes

the ship left of pure white clouds
collided unabridged.
There was peace.

~

Breezes

Breezes die
like persuasion:

buds opening
and closing

with waning
sunlight,

a monk’s
bowl, filled

with petals
or rice,

what we find
difficult

in time’s keep.

~

Denouement

When it was over, I looked
over the sea (the sun half-

full) of prepositions: of
and for rose amid waves,

seemed shadows shorn from
sleeping elbows I knew,

a light-dark light-dark to I
looked forward to.

~