RICHARD T. RAUCH - POEMS

Richard T. Rauch lives along Bayou Lacombe in southeast Louisiana. Rick manages rocket propulsion test projects at NASA’s Stennis Space Center by day and writes by night. His poetry has recently appeared in Neologism, Plainsongs, Steam Ticket, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Wimperbang.

THIN ICE
​

​Archangels descend in glorious white,
swinging their hips for us with a vengeance.
 
We find ourselves dumbstruck, trembling, prostrate
with fear. Our tears stream and puddle¾the warmth
 
of our sudden lamentations, a mixed blessing
to those of us backsliding on thin ice,
 
too far from the silver linings of the shoreline.
We are shivering silhouettes, transfixed
 
by frozen starbursts of growling cracks
melting against us, radiating away.
 
“Where are the gilded wings to lift us?” we ask.
We grow weary of speculation. Our shivering stops.
 
Our last image, an icy-blue halo,
as we gasp the numbing waters at last.
 

WRANGLING WHYS

​We ride
a whim
woefully
roaming
a wild
wickedly
wonderful
wide-ranging
wanderer
waiting
in want
of awe
wistfully
wrestling
with why
for a while.
 
For wonderment
awakens within
a wish of why,
 
and why
is the way
we wrangle
this whirling
world on which
we wait.