Tag: Martin Willitts Jr

Two Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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Blacksmithing When I Was Seventeen

I respond to an urgent request;
a horse has thrush on its hooves.
Only three ways this could happen.
Either, an unclean barn with muck;
or, lack of daily cleaning of the hoof; or, both.
This incident practically spells animal abuse,
lack of care, waiting too long to admit their guilt.
I don’t have to scold them.
They already look ashamed.
Any longer, I would have to but the horse down,
place a bullet between its black eyes.
I must remove this black tar-like ooze
between the small triangle spot on the hoof’s bottom.
A horse must be held gently, sung to
in a la-la-la cooing,
like putting a baby to nap. I must be tender,
making slow, cantering love. I know how.
I’ve seen stallions mount and mate.
I hum. A horse’s heart must be at rest,
while scrapping, avoiding their heart galloping,
like after being penned in all winter,
released in spring, sprinting as if
trying to escape their skin,
their own pain. It gets agonizingly late.
Stars appear as horseshoes.
I must file down this wound with a rasp.
I don’t need to ask the owner
how he would like it
if I scraped the skin off his feet.
This rasp might feel more abrasive.
Hard. Metallic. Rubbing and rubbing.
I urge this horse to relax using lullabies.
I have to calm my own self. Slower.
Focus on curing.
I can always blame the owner later.
The horse senses attention and caring,
thanking me with a nuzzle.
The owner still can’t look me in my eyes.
You can’t cinch a saddle tighter than guilt.

*

When the Sun Scrunches Over the Starting-to-Awakening Landscape

A yellow butternut flower opens
and no bees appear to pollinate it.

I know in the grand scale of importance
this is not important,
considering wars, school shootings,
police-state crackdowns,
impending natural disasters spiraling out of control,
but my butternuts won’t grow without bees.

The news warns about bee collapse,
as if a building hit by a drone launching missiles.
I know these two are not similar,
but my blueberries never blossomed. No bees.

I frantically use a paintbrush inside butternut flowers,
transferring pollen from one yellow flower to another.
I can’t paint salvation, or resurrection,
or the end of trouble, but I can try.
Once again, the sun rises, unfolding like a butternut flower.

Once again, the sun rises, a day without dreams,
but plenty of untended consequences, a day of anguish.
Once again, once again, o lordy, once again,
when another butternut flower collapses due to the lack of bees.

O, silence of bees, the sun tells lies
that this will be a better day. Once again,
promises not kept. Once again, I dab a brush
into butternut flowers to save whatever I can preserve.

There’s no rain forecasted in the clear, blueberry sky.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian that trained Librarians for New York State Public Libraries. He lives in Syracuse, New York. He is an editor for Comstock Review, and he is the judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Competition. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022; and the 2025 Silent River Poetry Prize. His 27 full-length collections include the National Ecological Award winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth Press, 2013) and the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024); “Martin Willitts Jr: Selected Poems” (FutureCycle Press, 2024); “Love Never Cools When It Is Hot” (Red Wolf Editions, 2025). Forthcoming books include 2025 Silent River Poetry Prize, “One Thousand Origami Paper Cranes Fly Away in Search of Peace;” “Bone Chills and Arpeggios” (Main Street Press, 2026), “Sounds I Cannot Hear Clearly Anymore Add Up to the Sum of Silence” (Bainbridge Island Press, 2026).

In My Near-Deaf Father’s Dreams by Martin Willitts Jr

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In My Near-Deaf Father’s Dreams

he could hear people clacking like adding machines,
a long roll of numbers never adding up.
Sound was whiteout when snow obliterates a road,
or chattering of locusts after their twelve-year emergence.

He kept searching for one sound
among a blizzard of silence. One noise shattering
limited possibilities. He did the best he could
with a hearing aid failing him miserably.

If he heard God’s voice, would it be a bluejay,
or a column of Roman numerals, or first snow
and the way it’s always soundless and soulless?
Dreams tell us truth or fears, but we never listen

or forget them, or vowels linger
the way a bluejay lands and folds its wings,
or sound vanishes into a crowd of unrelenting voices.
I speak for the hearing impaired.

I too, lose my hearing.
I can’t say that listening closer or harder helps.
It doesn’t.
It just exposes me to this harsh reality:

I can’t hear you the way I want to.
And all of us deserves to be heard. Even my father,
who never knew what I sounded like,
or if words were merely patterns of dreams.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian that trained Librarians for New York State Public Libraries. He lives in Syracuse, New York. He is an editor for Comstock Review, and he is the judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Competition. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022; and the 2025 Silent River Poetry Prize. His 27 full-length collections include the National Ecological Award winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth Press, 2013) and the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024); “Martin Willitts Jr: Selected Poems” (FutureCycle Press, 2024); “Love Never Cools When It Is Hot” (Red Wolf Editions, 2025). Forthcoming books include 2025 Silent River Poetry Prize, “One Thousand Origami Paper Cranes Fly Away in Search of Peace;” “Bone Chills and Arpeggios” (Main Street Press, 2026), “Sounds I Cannot Hear Clearly Anymore Add Up to the Sum of Silence” (Bainbridge Island Press, 2026).

Two Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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Vigil

Daybreak brings an overflowing of swirling birds
without purpose or plan.

My face ripples with that swooping wing movement.

I stand at the gateway of whatever will happen next,
light quivering as day begins.

I lift this message in my hands,
feathery-light,
and offer it to you.

*

Someone Killed the Bluebird of Happiness

Each tomorrow erases you
further from my heart, every day rips
memory apart, splits time into unequal slices.

This earth itself seems speechless
about whether or not you were real,
or vague fragments of hesitation.

Useless words torment as black rain,
because someone killed the only bluebird
singing recklessly about happiness.

It took a minute for you to leave,
a rending of sheet music, a disturbance
of sound being murdered. You left behind shards,

pieces of words too late to apologize,
and now my tongue blackens from untying
grief. Tugging never untangles memory.

*

Martin Willitts Jr, a retired Librarian who trained Librarians for New York State Public Libraries. He lives in Syracuse, New York. He is an editor for Comstock Review, and he is the judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Competition. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the National Ecological Award winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth Press, 2013) and the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024); “Martin Willitts Jr: Selected Poems” (FutureCycle Press, 2024); and “Love Never Cools When It Is Hot” (Red Wolf Editions, 2025)

Three Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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At a Memorial Service, I Do Not Hold My Breath, But Sigh Air

Every word spoken out of grief enters my heart.
Grief contains praise.
I listen —

wind and rain tickling off leaves —
praise
for my trying to repair the brokenness of this earth.

Birdsongs create their daily practice
to get the tone just right,
just as perfect as sunrise.

This breath I have, I don’t want to waste it.
My lungs almost collapsed once,
and the lesson I learned was:

listen to my chest, my frantic heart
telling me, beat, beat heart, beat.
I keep working the soil,
try to heal it
as one breath.
Praise air.

Praise each morning needing repair,
needing replenishing,
tend to simple moments

when breath waits,
inhale
and exhale,

a great sigh of life
giving
and receiving.

*

The Journey

         For Alice Wood

Today, my wife’s sister died at eight o’clock in the morning,
and I swear,
this morning
birds stopped singing:

a kind of quiet that accompanies slight rain.

The kind of day that folds
like sheets fresh off the clothesline,
smelling of sunshine. The silence following
a body surrendering to sea. The way a sail can tilt
the wrong way in a sudden wind shift.

Some deaths
are measured by time, place, and circumstances.

Today,
when birds found their voices return,
they sang about hope.

Not hopelessness.
Not dirges.

But hope.

The kind of hope that arrives as a rescue in time,
or ease of dying in our sleep.
The kind of hope wanting to know
what we will find at the end of life.

*

I Wish There Was More Love in This World

A boy becomes a stillness hardly noticed,
fully up to his imagination, those moments
hiding beneath the surface, and able to vanish
into a trickle.

He’s in his environment studying some flat rocks,
hoping to find a fossilized impression of a fern.

Every object in these woods keeps secrets.

The sky darkens its face,
a quiet following trace evidences of silence,

because the boy has found his father’s loaded gun.

What the boy does next
depends on what the quiet tells him:
how close or far
the distance to the quiet
if he doesn’t have a map.

I wish there was more love in this world
of suddenness and grief. I wish he notices
light remains transient
on this river of troubles
being carried away. I wish he finds assurances
of the reeds whispering,
relax.

I wish the abundance of scents of pine,
calms him about fierce tenderness
of survival. I wish
that fossilized fern teaches him
more love
in this landscape with infinite possibilities.

What the boy does next
depends on what the quiet tells him.

*

Martin Willitts Jr, a retired Librarian that trained Librarians for New York State Public Libraries. He lives in Syracuse, New York. He is an editor for Comstock Review, and he is the judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Competition. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the National Ecological Award winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth Press, 2013) and the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024); “Martin Willitts Jr: Selected Poems” (FutureCycle Press, 2024); and “Love Never Cools When It Is Hot” (Red Wolf Editions, 2025)

Paper Lanterns by Martin Willitts Jr

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Paper Lanterns

Imagine
over one hundred thousand
paper lanterns
inscribed
with names
of the dead
floating down
the Ohita River
towards the ocean
quiet
and lit
edges
flaking
into ash

imagine
your name
on one of them
after Hiroshima

imagine
silence
burning

*

Martin Willitts Jr, a retired Librarian that trained Librarians for New York State Public Libraries. He lives in Syracuse, New York. He is an editor for Comstock Review, and he is the judge for the New York State Fair Poetry Competition. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the National Ecological Award winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth Press, 2013) and the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024); “Martin Willitts Jr: Selected Poems” (FutureCycle Press, 2024).

Two Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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Bringing Bodies like Kindling Wood

There are times, when the sky opens up and cries.
The sky cried all the time, it seemed, in Vietnam.
I tried pulling bodies out of the line of fire,
out of mud, out of endless caustic rainfall.
I’d find parts of a human and bring wounded back.
Often, death could not wait, and I’d arrive too late.
Rain was juxtaposed at intersection of life and death.
Rain did not care about longitude or latitude of pain.

In Vietnam, it rained bullets in Agent Orange skies.
On my last mission, the day before going home,
carrying a man, I hit a trip-wire, and I lifted into the sky.
Doctors took skin grafts from my arms to my burnt feet,
without medication, rain confessed to my wounds.
I learned what it is like to be carried out alive.

* 

On the Battlefield

During the shelling,
bullets sing as they pass by me.
I’m kneeling over a body
opening my field medic kit.
He is not going to make it.
He sees my concern, my averting eyes.
He asks the million-dollar question:
Where is God in all this?

I can’t save him.
I can barely save myself.
At this moment, religion abandons us.
What are we supposed to believe in?
During this moment of fear, sweat, and death,
I find no easy answer.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He was nominated for 17 Pushcart and 13 Best of the Net awards. Winner of the 2012 Big River Poetry Review’s William K. Hathaway Award; 2013 Bill Holm Witness Poetry Contest; 2013 “Trees” Poetry Contest; 2014 Broadsided award; 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, November 2016, Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December, 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. He won a Central New York Individual Artist Award and provided “Poetry on The Bus” which had 48 poems in local buses including 20 bi-lingual poems from 7 different languages. He has over 20 full-length poetry collections including “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Still Point Press, 2024); “Not All Beautiful Things Need to Fly” (Silver Bow Publishing, 2024); “Martin Willitts Jr, Collected Works” (FutureCycle Press, 2024); and forthcoming, “Bone Chills and Arpeggios” (March Street Press, 2025).

Everything is Connected by Martin Willitts Jr

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Everything is Connected

It’s pointless to regret what might have been.
Just ask my father about the Second World War,
when his cannon backfired,
killing everyone else immediately, and leaving him deaf.
He knew what it was like to be covered in blood splatter.

I can picture my father, limp on red ground,
when some field medic, checking for pulses,
brings him back to safety. War explodes time.

I know the loneliness of choices,
as a field medic in Vietnam,
how survivors feel guilty making it alive,
other men never going home.

I can almost see my father
waking up on a cot in a hospital, unable to hear
some doctor asking, “Can you follow my finger?”
The doctor’s lips moving silently,
my father not responding.

I also know this story:

my father had a war buddy
who promised to fix him up with a woman he knew.
She worked in a factory where they made weapons
that helped increase killing.
When she witnessed all those wounded men
next to my father, she quit her job.
She became my mother.

When I received my draft notice for Vietnam,
my mother hid the mail. She knew war subtracts,
leaves some wounds you never see.

I volunteered to be a medic. I couldn’t imagine killing.

War numbs many of us. I know what it’s like
to walk through fields of dying and wounded men,
needing to leave the dying behind.
I touched death. It felt human.

My mother never forgave me for being that close to death.

My father never told me what it was like to be a survivor;
I had to learn the hard way.

My mother tip-toed around problems, biting her tongue,
frustrated with his deafness.

I could never tell my son about war,
although he loved playing with toy soldiers.
He might have thought it odd when I suggested
needing a toy medic, although he never said anything.

We never know where life goes,
and choices narrow into vanishing points.
Not being able to talk out issues
leaves scabs on a heart.

And, I have to admit,
I could not tell him the toll war had taken on me.
I could not talk about Vietnam for years.
I kept those secrets inside me,
a locket of misery.

I still have problems talking about it.

War creates another type of deafness.
I am trying to remove those bandages of silence.

It’s time to carry out the wounded.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He was nominated for 17 Pushcart and 13 Best of the Net awards. Winner of the 2012 Big River Poetry Review’s William K. Hathaway Award; 2013 Bill Holm Witness Poetry Contest; 2013 “Trees” Poetry Contest; 2014 Broadsided award; 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, November 2016, Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December, 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. He won a Central New York Individual Artist Award and provided “Poetry on The Bus” which had 48 poems in local buses including 20 bi-lingual poems from 7 different languages.

He has over 20 full-length poetry collections including “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Still Point Press, 2024); “Not All Beautiful Things Need to Fly” (Silver Bow Publishing, 2024); “Martin Willitts Jr, Collected Works” (FutureCycle Press, 2024); and forthcoming, “Bone Chills and Arpeggios” (March Street Press, 2025).

A Voice I Heard Not Too Late to Make a Difference by Martin Willitts Jr

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A Voice I Heard Not Too Late to Make a Difference

A voice flies out of an unseen place
holding a glassful of promises and memories,
in the way many people can see
from many different viewpoints.
We do not need to be disconnected from this world,
even when we are sad.
This doesn’t have to be a dark, dark world.
I practice being small and quiet,
walking into our world with new eyes,
to feel belonging. I belong
to the now, where imagination opens
the strangeness of a wing
belonging to a hatchling
trying to feel secure enough to launch into air,
to trust success. Is this so very hard?
I want to face what is hard in this world.
I recall when oranges arrived in a wooden crate,
smelling citrus, how it belonged to a place
of orchards that I never saw as a child but could imagine.
I live in this world of startled energies, its aliveness,
until it appears too quickly, like a hornet’s nest
or the impossible deer shadows
running after the doe has been killed.
A heron stands at water’s edge, unmoving,
its reflection wavering on water.
I vanish without knowing it, after dreaming too long.
I keep translating this into sign language
so that each word takes more time for someone
to understand each image and finger spelling of action words,
so that someone has to slow down too.
Slowing down becomes important. Noticing takes focus,
and before anyone realizes it, a thin spike of light
comes begging at our window,
with its stunning intense stare, like forsythia blooming,
trembling before rain or when you pass by
bringing your dreams, and your questioning mind.
This is when I began hearing voices.
But, perhaps, you hear something different
and it takes you out of the ordinary,
makes you turn a different direction,
taking you to a place sacred only to you.
There’s room for many possible voices to hear.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022); “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” including all 36 color pictures (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); and “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024).

Three Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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Emptying Time

While I was asleep, my father died,
slipped into that great coda, when memory passes
from one person to another person,
and I became a gatekeeper of his life.

And since there were gaps in his history,
I began filling them.

On my way to my father’s funeral,
a large whooping crane wafts across the bay
where a lavender light floats on water.

Before the dead releases,
breath becomes one door closing,

another one opening.
That strange lyric
of a life that continues
when someone starts sharing a memory.

I wasn’t there when he died,
but I have witnessed others at their last sigh
as a field medic in Vietnam. I remember
each of them like a slick country road
I must maneuver/drive in the dark.

The crane lifts its impossible weight,
its head matching crimson morning-break,
its whoop-whoop trumpets my loss.

How heavy a crane looks, large wingspan
almost tipping both edges of the sky,

endlessly suspended in air,
an aimless cloud, always present,
untouchable as thought.

*

I Had Been Expecting This Phone Call Since January

I hoped I was wrong.
Unfortunately, his voice on the other end
confirmed what I knew had to be true.

“Mom died in her sleep.”

I felt sorry for my son
passing on this information.

At least she died in her sleep,
someone would say, eventually. This
kind of news I expected.

Some would say
it was a relief she died;
painless, in her sleep.

People always say this
when they do not know what else to say.

I do not know what to say to my son
to ease his pain,
when often I lack the necessary words.
Some experiences in life
are not explained easily.

Life’s hardest lessons
leave no rational justifications.

We muddle through trauma
hoping sadness eventually fades away.
And it’s hard work;
often memory-pain returns at the worst moments.

Yes, she died in her sleep.
It was expected, and then
it happened, quietly.

Unfortunately, my son witnessed her death.
It will hover in his heart for a long time.

I cannot tell him how long his sadness will last,
or how sadness ebbs and flows,
boomerangs back,
because each person enters grief differently,
and it has no set time limit
how long suffering will last.

There’s no manual to explain how grief works.
Loss is experiential.

I held onto the silence in the telephone call
like a lifeline to my son.
I knew he was drowning
and there are no words
to soothe this kind of pain.

Silence lasted for a long time.

*

Lastness of Silence

This world does not know true meaning of silence:
it disturbs, tears hearts. My son, my son,
where are you in this orange-red world? You left

         unsettling news. What could I do differently
         to change this terrible mockingbird song?

How could I have placed my thumb on these scales?
I find a distance between snapped hearts and no maps.
I walk as silent as this night, searching, searching,

         and you are not there. My son, my lost son,

lost within his own explanations. Answers are not here,
or in blank places in this sad jazz. My world empties.

You have not spoken to me since, my son, my son
of awful distances. This world cannot explain
true meaning of this silence, its haunting melody.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022); “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” including all 36 color pictures (Shanti Arts Press, 2024); and “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024).

It Rains Memory by Martin Willitts Jr

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It Rains Memory

Rain pours grief among the silhouette length of trees,
hammers or tap-dances on my roof,
or sending Morse code for help.

Both yesterday and tomorrow are dreams.
Yesterday reminds me about missed opportunities,
bad decisions, screwed-tight angry faces.
Tomorrow whispers promises. Today, rains
makes piano chords of sorrow in my heart.
My face drenches on a window.

It rains body bags.
Rain never falls twice the same way
sounds of gunfire, collateral damage reports.

I keep reminding myself
about the commonness of rain.
No flashback lightnings. No burials.
A normal rain Gene Kelly danced in,
kicking street puddles,
tossing away a broken umbrella.

Rain raising new flower shoots.
No gunshots. No identified bodies,
matching them with dog tags during war.
No messages for rescue; rescue arriving too late.

In the deluge, sparrows chatter.
I tell myself this is normal. They’re excited.
I tell myself, I’m home,
not sending bodies back from Vietnam.
I repeat, I’m home, not believing it,
pinching myself.

No. It’s rain on my arms.
This is normal.
I made it home.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December, 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022); “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); and “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023). Forthcoming is “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” with colored pictures (Shanti Press, 2024).

The Long Sorrow by Martin Willitts Jr

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The Long Sorrow

The unmoving clouds hang empty in the pale skies.
The yawning stilled branches of trees
lost their leaves too soon,
waving like a person surrendering
with hands becoming white flags.
It is already way too soon.
The clock groans at each passing.
The world departs in fits and starts, unraveling
life’s stitching. God made a thumbprint lake
and now, the water dwindles, gasping for breath.
Is it too much too say
we have spoiled and rotted this earth?
Voices grind like ax blades on a sharpening tool.
Ask the turkey buzzards circling.
Ask the old woman sobbing in the kitchen,
worrying her floors to the bone.
Ask the clouds rung dry. No wind for miles.
A great disturbance looms
with the giant scolding finger.
A desperate man cranks up a bucket from a well,
and inside floats empty excuses.
The trees are dying,
their branches are fingers ripping the sky open
hoping to find water.
The crazed birds do not know where to land,
where it might be safe, realizing,
maybe, all the safe places are decimated.
Tell the river trying to run away, not to flee.
Tell the girl with parched, cracked lips.
Tell the boy plowing beyond hope.
Tell the ships where all the water went.
How can I find solace in this sight,
this failure brought upon us
by many uncaring hands?
Hands with sawdust from trying to repair,
throw penny nails into the sky.
Today, the soil turns loosely from my hands,
grain of dust. I heard its song of sadness.
This song is the long sorrow
of animals lurking towards extinction.
How can I find solace in this sight?
The eyes of owls observe and inquire.
Where do I begin to repair when I am so small?
Problems shadow the land
like crows eating plants until nothing remains.
Many hands carry the weight of excuses.
No one can lift them, nor ignore them,
nor resolve them. Small steps across
the floor never covers much ground.
Each shifting piece of dirt turning the dust
shouts for me to do whatever I can.
Too much shouting,
and the simple voice cannot be heard.
Shoes leave us behind.
Soldiers salute flags with no purpose,
although leaders promise changes.
Those promises are as numerous
and as useless as the soil turning to dust.
A monstrous glow nearing
cannot be normal. When I say this,
My hands turn into dust.
I wish that was not true,
but my wishes are dust, too.
The ground knows my wishes
will not repair the damages of disrepair.
In my heart, a sad violin
forgets music. Its strings are strangled.
A dry throat cannot sing.
A bird without music flies into my face.
It writes questions on my face.
My face without reason.
My face with a thousand useless pacing.
My mouth full of dust when I try to speak.
Tell the abandoned why they are forgotten.
I can’t.
Dear monster, someone has fed you.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December, 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022); “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Press, 2023); and “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023).

Two Kinds of Silence by Martin Willitts Jr

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Two Kinds of Silence

My grandfather never spoke much —
he let his work speak for himself,
a part of the sacred silence,

whereas, my father could hardly hear,
and I wondered if this was the other part of silence.

I learned how to bend horseshoes from grandfather,
yet I never knew if my father could hear me.
I found myself in silence’s intersection,
like wheat tips in wind or lips moving without words.

Silence was the wrens swooping like the gate swinging;
cows moving their soft bodies into the far fields.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired librarian. He is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December, 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022); “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Press, 2023); and “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023).

Communication by Martin Willitts Jr

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Communication

I never knew how stubborn my father was
until I tried to teach him sign language.

I know the universal sign for “stubborn”.
I fold my arms tight to my chest
and pout like a toddler.

To sign “refuse,” shrug,
open palms upwards.
It can also mean “I give up,”
or “I don’t know.”

I learned how to be stubborn from my father.

I persisted at trying, not wanting to quit.
The sign for “repetition” points
both index fingers at each other
which make small, tight circles.

People who don’t want to communicate
circle and don’t meet.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired librarian. He is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December, 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021); “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022); “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022); “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Press, 2023); and “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023).

Two Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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Manifestation

As I sit in the room of my mother’s grief,
my father’s unused chair remains mute,
holding inside its arms his absence.

My mother keeps me in her head,
refusing to let me go
where the goldfinches are active at the feeder.
So, I listen like a mourning wall, as she wails
from the deep well of sadness.

As a child stirring mud
freshened by a sprinkler can of water
trying to find the right consistency
I wanted to create a mud pie for my father’s desert.
In the background, birds were doing rounds
like they taught at school,
how and when to enter after one group is finished
with layered waves of music. Even now,

in the present, I think of goldfinches
taking turns at the feeder, row
after yellow row. I wait to speak
when my mother’s sob subsides and crash
against the shores of the room.

I recall the pride offering my mud pie,
leaving muddy palm prints on the doorknob,
tracks of brown footprints on the carpet.
My father looked down like a curious god,
so that his glasses slid to his nose tip,
and declared it was too perfect to eat.

My mother bawled louder, a nose-honking sob,
declared she didn’t want that story
or to remember the yellow birds dancing at the feeder
and how she had to purge my clothes, and plunging me
fully dressed in the bathtub, and wait
for the water to stop being coffee colored.

I thought the story might make her smile a crack,
but I made the sadness worse.

The door to my mother’s grief
locks me in shadows. I feel as useless as dad’s shirts
empty and drooping in the closet.

Even a deer, far away, in the woods
beyond the train tracks, holds its breath
afraid to exhale, not move so jerkily, not to stir
the silence.

Silence is that empty birdfeeder, and the way it sways
when the birds realize there isn’t any more.

I sit and listen to the sadness gather steam,
a train barreling down the tracks. I sit
in my mother’s grief room,
and I do the only thing I can do:

I listen.

The next thing I know,
my father’s ghost sits on the chair.

*

Talking to My Brother

Now we are talking, like forever,
as long as weather finds the impossibly still fields.
It’s long past time for talking like this,
although we are as quiet as the wind.

It takes a while before the conversation can begin,
before it can ever end, so the silence stretches
long and far as breath to reach a far dandelion puff
or the sun chasing the moon’s skirts.

We are below the wheeling of starlings,
punctuating the quiet with their etchings.
We have to begin somewhere. Someone must talk,
or the lack of conversation will swallow us.

Perhaps we should start somewhere, say the weather
is becoming more unpredictable,
and connect it to how we need to be connected.
But that’s not what happens.

We grow old in our uncomfortable feelings.
Regardless, another day will come and pass
if we say nothing about the gap of years.
I must talk or this meeting is wasted.

I start. We begin talking, like forever.
This is how to rekindle love. One step forward,
two awkward step, three easier.
There are some bridges to mend, now he has cancer.

This is one of the tools. For you see,
there is a different kind of love for a family member
when you had to pass plates of mashed potatoes
or sit in a tent outside telling ghost stories.

*

Martin Willitts Jr is an editor of Comstock Review. He won numerous poetry awards. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent book is “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2022). Forthcoming is “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Press, 2023).

Two Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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The Story of Absence

In watercolors, it is helpful to leave blank spaces
for the viewer to fill in, splash in their own colors.

An empty net needs filling, says the fisherman,
to the silent reflective lake. Grandma says, leave
one imperfect stitch, and an eye will balance it.
The hint of absence is important in jazz.
My father tangled in deaf silence,
pieced together meaning.

In watercolors, it is helpful to move fast,
let colors collide, let dry, hope the impression lasts.

A hummingbird
left behind the impression of here-and-gone,
emptiness and filling.

Mother says my imagination is bedeviling,
Sometimes, in life, it is better leaving some blanks.

*

Rain and Afterwards

The sound of rain — the hammering of roofing nails.
The cold, purple sky shivers
and broods,
prowls over us, blocking sunlight.
Rain’s haggard face tells both a new and old story,
as tender as first love
entering the brick house of our hearts,
making us sing for no reason,
singing loudly, not caring
if our song disturbs complete strangers.
My soul eats up this music, can’t get enough of it.

*

Martin Willitts Jr, edits the Comstock Review, judges New York State Fair Poetry Contest. Nominated for 17 Pushcart and 13 Best of the Net awards. Winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, 2016, Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2020. His 25 chapbooks include the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections including Blue Light Award “The Temporary World.” His new book is “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022).

Two Poems by Martin Willitts Jr

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Unlimited Love

The narcissus flower’s everlasting promise to return each spring
does not include lasting forever. There is a limit to love.

Every living object cannot last. It is terrible to know tulips
only last a few days, yet we go on our daily habits,
never noticing if they were red or yellow or white.

It seems foreign to miss those opportunities,
their absence, their intensity,
their souls leaping out of the dead.

We wait for birds to sing in morning mist,
their brushstrokes like chamber music.
We do not want to miss noticing those moments —

not even in the precision and evenness of rain.
The slow death of the orange narcissuses
proves absolutely nothing with life lasts forever.

The heart travels into endless searching,
like a thousand geese
tugging the sun across the velvet sky by long red ropes.

The sky blurs so we don’t have to see
the stupefying numbers of galaxies trying to contain
all the names of the missing,

or the ones found dead,
bodies loosening
into dragonflies skimming a pond.

*

When Prayers Form

Sometimes, I walk to where the world has not yet begun,
and wait for it to catch up to me. Sometimes, I can’t wait —
I’m so excited about starting I begin without the light.
Then, sunlight splits the ground from the sky
into a slow unraveling. But I can’t wait for a beginning or
its dramatic flair. I keep moving, dragging the day behind me.
I keep time in motion. And, when I wait by the entrance of light —
its ooze and flash, I bristle with anticipation.
There is no boundary between start and finish.

*

Martin Willitts Jr, edits the Comstock Review, judges New York State Fair Poetry Contest. Nominated for 17 Pushcart and 13 Best of the Net awards. Winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, 2016, Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2020. His 25 chapbooks include the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections including Blue Light Award “The Temporary World.” His new book is “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022).

Daily Greetings of Love by Martin Willitts Jr.

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Daily Greetings of Love

In the tight, compact storage,
there’s room for overflowing love.

Inside love, there’s room for all of us —
pearls of star-jewels, asparagus,

stuff we cannot even imagine,
objects we cannot even name —

firecrackers of love, the illusion of fire
from the arbor lights for returning boats,

stars that witnessed the Cretaceous period,
the whole periodical table of love.

*

Martin Willitts Jr. edits the Comstock Review. His 25 chapbooks include the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections includes 2019 Blue Light Award “The Temporary World” and “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022).