WILLIAM OGDEN HAYNES - POEMS

William Ogden Haynes is a poet and author of short fiction from Alabama who was born in Michigan. He has published six collections of poetry (Points of Interest; Uncommon Pursuits, Remnants, Stories in Stained Glass, Carvings and Going South) and one book of short stories (Youthful Indiscretions) all available on Amazon.com.  Over a hundred and fifty of his poems and short stories have appeared in literary journals and his work is frequently anthologized. http://www.williamogdenhaynes.com

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The Hope of Robins
​

​He remembers a morning when he was a boy, rising
to the reveille of birdsong expertly warbled by a pair
of robins just outside his open bedroom window.
The chirping proclaimed the promise of spring and life
 
lay before him like a set of shiny railroad tracks headed
for the future. If only he had put his ear to those rails
to hear the distant grinding wheels of a dark, destructive
diesel hurtling toward him for an inevitable collision.
 
But, as young men often do, he never took the time to look
ahead. And now, twenty springs later, he is startled awake
by a guard yelling into a microphone telling the men to get
dressed and go to breakfast. That day, a few hours before
 
his parole hearing, he walks the exercise yard in an orange
jumpsuit with a garbage bag. His eyes are downturned,
looking for cigarette butts in the dirt and sparse grass,
as if he were an April robin scavenging for worms.  
 

Bachelorhood
​

​He has never wed and in middle age he isn’t likely to.
And it’s just as well, since half of marriages end
 
in divorce and there’s no point in taking chances.
He always wanted a marriage like his parents, happily
 
together for over fifty years. But he never seems to meet
the right woman. Perhaps it’s because he has a knack
 
for finding women in bars as he did one night in Reno.
He kept her telephone number in his wallet for months,
 
as if it were something he might someday need, but he
didn’t know why. And before long, looking at the contents
 
of his wallet in a dark booth of a Chinese restaurant,
he stares at her number but can’t remember her face.
 
He crumples the scrap of paper and places it on his empty
plate like an unsatisfying prediction from a fortune cookie.
 
 

​Prophylaxis Interruptus
 
Prophylaxis: Action taken to prevent a specific disease.
 

​The only reason I have an annual dental hygiene appointment is to
reduce the odds of my dentist actually working on me. In a dream
I once saw my dentist, a descendant of the famous Dr. Mengele,
 
through the half open door to his private office. He was smiling at
a display case full of miniature African animals he had carved from
human teeth with a dental drill. Although that was a dream, when I
 
see him in person, I have visions of Laurence Olivier in Marathon
Man approaching me with the drill asking, Is it safe?  The only
time I want to see my dentist is after the hygienist finishes up with
 
the tooth polish and he comes into the room for a short social chat
as I nervously writhe in the chair. Then he looks around my mouth
with a mirror, gently touching some teeth with a curved stainless
 
steel pick, ominously saying uh huh looking back and forth between
my mouth and x-rays posted on a light box. And if the prophylaxis
has worked as planned, he says Everything looks good. That’s why
 
I religiously attend my yearly dental hygiene appointments with
the expectation that they will find no cavities, gingivitis or a
malignant node beneath my tongue. Just a quick cleaning and
 
a walk to the parking lot under a sunny blue sky with my goodie
bag and a single appointment card for the following year. And
on such a day I often stop at the mall for some shopping and
 
lunch in the food court to celebrate another year of dodging the drill,
the syringe or the pliers. But on todays visit the x-rays show multiple
cavities between the teeth and my gums bled profusely during cleaning.
 
Today, I leave the office unfurling my umbrella against a heavy
rain with a handful of appointment cards wondering if my molars
will soon be added to the menagerie in the dentists private office.
 
 
 
 

Silence and Sound
​

​He lies bloody
in the clearing,
tuskless, soundless
and motionless.
 
The elephants ears,
deaf as caladiums,
will never hear again
the sounds of the African bush.
 
He will pay no heed to the alarming
scream of the baboon, the trumpeting
of his brothers, the hiss, snort and
grunt of the hippopotamus. Gone
 
will be the sniggering of the hyena,
the call of the guinea fowl, and the
sounds of an African thunderstorm.
He will not hear the chirping of crickets
 
in the Bushveld at night, the shrill screech
of the fish eagle, or the night sounds
of lions growling. He will be oblivious
to the penetrating call of a startled ibis
 
and the yelping of the black-backed jackal.
And all of this silence, this irrevocable deafness
of death, is just so someone might hear the
sound of a compliment on a new ivory necklace.
 

Writers Block
​

​She stares at the field of white light, the cursor winking at her
as if to say, not today honey. The legal pad, her usual go-to
 
solution, has six pages of starts, cross-outs and erasures. So,
she decides to venture to the park because writing in her study
 
has drawn a blank, not just for one day but for weeks. On the day
she goes to write a poem outdoors, the park sidewalk is complicated
 
with hungry sparrows. And now, she approaches a bench of forest
green with peeling paint and splinters poised to snag her skirt, so she
 
sits on a low wall next to a towering birch. Looking up, she sees a
large owl strangely perched on a branch in the middle of the day.
 
There are drops of water from a passing storm beading up on the
few bench slats that still retain paint. Clouds wrung of rain float
 
past as the sun begins to burn through. And what will be the topic
of her poem? A verse about the owl, the rainfall, the sparrows, or
 
the deteriorating bench? It could be about the tree with its peeling
birch bark proffered like sheets of paper. But that’s all been done
 
thousands of times by other poets and she wants to write about
something unique. And then inspiration strikes. It could be
 
about a woman poet who goes to the park with a dried-up muse
and once in nature regains her voice. But the owl looks down
 
at her with riveting yellow-orange eyes and intones, Ars Poetica
was written by Horace in the year 19 BC in which he describes
 
moving out of Rome to the country to escape writers block.
And that’s when she decides her best bet is to stick with the owl.