Today, I present two poems from the chapbook Poems for Lorca, written by the late Syracuse journalist Walt Shepperd. I discovered the collection in the small gift shop in ArtRage Gallery.

I mistakenly thought the title referenced Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. But in the dedication page, Walt wrote: “For my daughter Lorca.”

Poems for Lorca by Walt Shepperd.

I’ve read this first poem multiple times, and I still don’t understand its meaning. But the ambiguous nature makes me appreciate the work even more. The words first hit me when I flipped through the book while walking along Crouse Avenue after leaving ArtRage on a sunny spring day. I think the poem has a timeless, universal quality.

An Easement for the Highway in Your Mind

The tinder has dried
and bridges
roots
and the canvas
in the windowframes
of someone else’s yesterdays
smolder
from sparks
carried
on an imperceptible breeze
down a road
between
trees
and tents
and tenements
over timbers
charred beyond support
of tomorrow’s weight.

They say
you can’t go home again
and they are mostly wrong
but your return
must be guided
by bulldozer tracks
and burial mounds
and streams filled in
with silt
of ruins crumbling
from your backward glance.

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The second poem also has a great title and a sense of mystery.

I Dreamt I Took a Two Week Vacation
in an Audrey Hepburn Movie

I never wanted birthdays
and Christmas
and mother’s day
to be what now
it seems
they must become,
excuses for remembering
that time is now a luxury.

We build new worlds
and gather things
that patch the strands
that chafe our shells
that brace our memories
into barricades
that must stand by themselves
for time is now a luxury.

The things we gather
gather dust
the barricades
won’t stand a charge
the boxes burn
the seeds grow mold
the papers crumble in the new light,
and love becomes the luxury.

Shepperd, Walt. Poems for Lorca. W.D. Hoffstadt & Sons, 2012.

I intend to place the book in a Little Free Library in my neighborhood so another reader can appreciate Walt’s words.