Eagle’s End
by Eric G.Muller
circling down to earth
the Eagle
lands in a hole
up on a wide hill
with sunk head he folds his
wings
and waits for the storm to come
water fills the
grave
loose earth caves in and buries
the feathery egg
freed,
he pierces through the rage
and spreads his cry to the stars
next
day in the sun
around the tomb of wet mud
many have
gathered
flocks of different feathers
with folded wings,
remembering
at the dawn of dusk
the hill rises up as
one
old songs sung new to the world
The Honey-Hag
The wizened Cretan widow
dressed
in well-worn black
smiled with patterned wrinkles
which coiled
all the way back
to the Minoan Snake Goddess
She broke off
two chunks
of flat braided bread – warm
insisting we
taste the sweetness
right there and then
and as we
chewed
with our nodding jaws
we sank into
a sleepy zone
of
milk and honey
giving new meaning
to the term –
breaking bread
left helpless we bought
the embroidered
tablecloth
as the honey-hag chuckled
sending her tongued
wrinkles
slithering down to her hands
as she tucked away
the coins
Garden Deal
Never let the palmed shuffle go too
wild while
flipping through yellowed notepads
where
abandoned gardens let hosepipe
philosophy grow amongst
tall weeds that trip the
nether-mind’s best intentions.
It only releases the pierce-eyed
detective who
tours the lasting cliffs of tacked
mugshots
across shiny walls and florescent
fatigue
as he joins clues with fat black
sharpies
Spreading the insects’
dissected sentences throughout
the precinct’s inner sanctum
where the manhunt
takes on ritual significance, until
a choreographed dance
along the contours of symbolic
scrawls breaks through the muck
Too often we’re fooled to
think we’ve found
the rare fruit, fantasizing how the
squeezed juice
flits across our animal tongues, in
everlasting
hope-drops that wet our desire for
more
But burns across the perennial red
carpet
igniting the papillae
into crumbling pillars
crushed to sand in night’s
frozen pockets
to sift through time’s ticking
fingers
As we reminisce how sweet
the other’s flesh tasted
when the buds still stood supple and
guilt free
while we thrilled your way out of
Eden
Starved and always aching for the
fruit we stole
forgetting that freedom’s crop
lies in the
spit-in-the-palm deal between hunter
and hunted
to go at it together – to tend
that garden for all
Eric
G. Muller teaches literature and drama at the Hawthorne Valley High
School in New York. He is a founding member of the Alkion Center and
the director of the education department. He has written two novels,
Rites of Rock (Adonis Press 2005) and Meet Me at the Met (Plain View
Press, 2010), as well as a collection of poetry, Coffee on the Piano
for You (Adonis Press, 2008). Poetry, articles and short stories have
appeared in various journals, anthologies and magazines.
www.ericmuller.com
