FRITZ EIFRIG - POEMS

Fritz Eifrig has been writing poems on and off for almost 40 years. His work has appeared in Poetry Quarterly, The Bookends Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, and Foxglove Journal. He lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. 

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​the inquiry of memory

​sunlight spins within cold eddies
flows over rocks
feathers along the drowsy sand,
its bright fingers verge on lurking belly, back, and fins;
darting away, ungrasped, dark speckled scales wink reproach.
 
inside this unsteady gleam
evanescent water scarps are caught
then lost,
a shifting window flashing clear and true
then gone.
 

​telegram

​rain in early morning
before the sun.
down roof and walls
talking now through earth.
to join, to make
a course connecting
across land and time
and into memories
untended and unguarded--
discovers passage through
silted causeways of the heart.
dreamed messages pass away,
disappearing,
fog in garden shade,
trickling water the only
sign of something said.
 

​fermata

​leaves lie dreaming
in the grass and across
the street, brushing
broken bottles, colors
mute in morning light.
 
west wind cuts among them,
cold whispers taunt:
what once was.
they turn and twist
but will not wake--
a season of sleep,
a time to die.
 
crow on a wire calls
a hole into the horizon.
a chill across my jacket.
what will the wind
tell me?
 

​crossing wabash at illinois

​pause at street-side, curb,
stairs, and bridges rise beside
a concrete bounded river.
taillights crest curves, kissed
in pale morning starshine;
somewhere birds must be waking.
 
recall the touch of light
across red hills and bluegreen pine,
the smell of dew and hide,
wet seeds and stone.
shining feather caught on bark,
gleam of white antler point,
my dark hair rolling in the young sky.
 
would that those footsteps had held
their shape,
clear trails through sleepy grasses
where I passed, eager then
and whole.
old songs float like piñon smoke                                                                                           
crowding this gray march
morning with the fluttering
of another time.
 
 

​before an ebbing

we were young and high, climbing
beneath a cavern of stars,
dune crest and its scrub brushing
feet and fingertips.
 
we sat and watched the fishermen
work for smelt, heavy rubber waders
sounding through the breakers,
slow work of nets glittering
full of scales and hooks.
 
a rising stillness wrapped our heads
and muffled time’s insistence,
yet all around us endless motion,
the tone of eons thrumming
from deep below and back again,
little bubbling secrets rushing out
across the dark wet sand.
 
that was summer’s dawning,
witness to a subtle tide,                                                                                                         
under slow curves of moonlight,
the shapes of our faces
looking east.
 
 ​