Poetry of Michael Estabrook

stuck in a damn Cirque de soleil dream

That damn dream (recurring
every now and then) really does
upset me, the one where I am stuck,
my feet and arms in hardening concrete,
in a tight space like a coffin
or a pew and I can’t get out.
I suppose it was triggered
by the Cirque de soleil show
we experienced this weekend,
absolutely amazing stunts,
hard to believe people can do
such things on trampolines
and tight ropes, juggling balls
and hoops, twisting their bodies
into contortions had to imagine.
The show began
with a couple of clown-like characters
rummaging through the audience
trying to find a suitable victim
who would fit into the coffin
they were wheeling around
up and down the aisles.
Yes that show must’ve triggered
my damn dream, my nightmare,
where I’m stuck
in this cramped, closed-in,
dark-as-death space,
a coffin I assume like the one
at the Cirque de soleil
and I’ve lost all hope
as the panic sets in
because I can’t get out.

TRAIPSING

What I love the most
after traipsing through dark, dusty rooms
in old Victorian mansions
and stumbling along
root-strewn woodland trails,
the bees and horse-flies working hard
to impede our progress,
is to sit here in our quiet room
in the Inn first thing in the morning, sipping
that first cup of steamy coffee,
listening to the soothing, sonorous sounds
of my wife’s sweet, delicate snoring,
while writing my observations
and ruminations about life
in my journal. James Boswell kept
a journal, too, you know, and Thomas Merton,
John Muir, Charles Darwin,
Henry David Thoreau, and Captain Cook.

from time to time

I can hear the train
in the distance through the trees,
the rumbling muted click-clacking
of its big metal wheels
along the tracks,
rumbling into the future
leaving the past behind
like all of us should I suppose
from time to time.

His three children are gone, out on their own, but his wife is still there and the stupid dog and the computer and email so he will write on, to what end he is not sure, but write on he will; still hoping to publish a full-length book of poems, called A Superlative Woman, about my superlative wife, one of these days.

Copyright 2007, Michael Estabrook ©. This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.