Art and LiteraturePoetry

All the Secrets

All the Secrets

You don’t believe me, look there, part the grass,
he’s walking through the kitchen in his shirt
you laugh he’ll hear you and come looking.
He keeps (I saw it from a faded picture
snagged at midnight on a full-waned moon
a solitary awning’s bulb the best light going)
a frog that talks, oh yes I mean it
don’t you say I lied, I’ve heard it croak
a choked horn’s wheeze that mutters
strains and tells him what roads to avoid
what bets to take, what makes his neighbors
scared and loansome staring up at night
into the dark. I’ll ask and get the picture
then you’ll see. It’s mostly just a shadow
through the window screen. But when
there’s things he wants to know he pulls
its bulging belly up the wall and nails it there
straight through over a line of slime.
You’ll see it in the picture. There’s a shoot of gas
comes out around the nail like propane
from a bad seal silvering the air
and that’s the voice I heard. I smelled it
all the secrets, all the bad stuff, all the things
you name and something breaks.

 

 

Photo credit
Daniel Hyland

Daniel Hyland

Daniel is a Catholic writer and voice artist living in the Shenandoah Valley with his wife and daughter. He believes in the power of beauty in life, nature and art as a tool of evangelism, and seeks to follow Christ through study, work and prayer. His favorite book of the Bible is the Song of Songs because of the stunning intimacy it presents both with regard to the sacrament of marriage and the marital union with God to which every soul is called in Christ. He is the proud owner of a small collection of facial hair, charitably termed a mustache.

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