"Diamondlight"

Dallas J. Bryant - 2008

      Helen Losse

              Needed In Train, Song, and Light
                                                        —for Tomas Karkalas

Where is Tomas,
when the train-whistle sounds for Birdsong Road,
sun and shadow diamonding

the rails? All disharmony made will ricochet
down, echo from heights of the lofty, blue mountains,
land on the kudzu-green floor, where coal chunks lie —

in stillness of valley — in the ballast
near the west tunnel, without Tomas.
Where is Tomas with his voice of wonder,

his heart of love in a boxcar
of worry and care? The light that surrounds us
lacks only his ray.

Medieval Device, ca. 1400s

Helen Losse is a poet and the Poetry Editor of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Her recent poetry publications include Ann Arbor Review, Lily, Ghoti, Right Hand Pointing, and Blue Fifth Review. She has two chapbooks, Gathering the Broken Pieces, available from FootHills Publishing and Paper Snowflakes, available from Southern Hum Press. Educated at Missouri Southern State and Wake Forest Universities, she lives in Winston-Salem, NC where she writes occasional book reviews and blogs at Windows Toward the World.

Helen is a regular contributor to The Centrifugal Eye.


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