If
There’s All This in One Passing Moment...
Through
the glass in the back screen door I see buds that soon will be leaves on the
tall Maple trees across the street. Right now, of course, the sight of them
reveals what it would be like if trees had skeletons — long dark fingery bits
at the end of longer darker thicker pieces, like Thai shadow puppets. They are
ghostly in the wind. And right then, six Canada geese, honking arrhythmically
in the wind, struggle to land on the nearby marsh, like jet fighters see-sawing
onto a pitching carrier deck in a fierce storm at sea. When I go out the door,
the door and the wind push back, and the door, when I let go of it, bangs
violently shut. “Don’t slam that door!” my wife calls out to me, belatedly.
Charles
D. Tarlton
Charles D. Tarlton is a retired politics professor who has been
writing poetry and short prose since 2006. He lives in Old Saybrook, Connecticut
with his wife, Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter, and a black female
standard poodle named Nikki.
He published poetry since 2006 has appeared in Jack Magazine, Shampoo, Review Americana, Tipton, Barnwood, Abramelin, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, The Houston Literary Review, Simply Haiku, Haibun Today, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Atlas Poetica, Contemporary Haibun Online, Blue and Yellow Dog, Shot Glass, Sketchbook, Skylark, Six Minute Magazine, Cricket Online Review, Red Booth Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Rattle, Dark Matter, Muse India, Inner Art Journal, Prune Juice, Ekphrastic Review, Blackbox Manifold (UK), Undertow Tanka Review, Spirit Wind Gallery, Randomly Accessed Poetics, Ribbons, Unbroken Journal, KYSO Flash, Ekphrastic Review, tinywords, Red Lights, The Journal (UK), Tallow Eider Quarterly, The American Aesthetic, London Grip, Book Ends Review, Ilanot Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Peacock Journal, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Nebo, and Palette.