Will Mayo Collection

Song for Gina

by

Will Mayo

Can be very young or very old.

A wisp of a wind in December, perhaps.

Or a hog wallowing in June-day squalor.

Maybe even a willow trembling upon its last branches

as sorrow aches from the final leaves.

Yes, Gina, I am all of these things.

A multifaceted man

with eyes turned brown with decay.

A demon that scares away

the things of the dark and the light.

A man who longs for peace,

yet will not have it.

And, true as the ice melts come the sun’s first light,

I would give you all this.

My soul, if you want it.

If not that,

then my mind fit for greater things.

And, if not that,

then my unyielding heart.

Come, little Gina,

enter the light.

Ease the balm of Gilead

upon my aching brow,

and I will tender you my thanks

with the words of a man

who knows not who he is.

The shepherd longs to be gone from his flock.

A Night With My Father

By

Will Mayo

Another memory of my father -

We were sitting at Cactus Flats, that hillbilly bar up on Highway 15, when suddenly I spied out of the corner of my eye one guy punching another out.

"Did you see that?" I asked my father.

"Shut up and drink your beer," he said.

I shut up and drank my beer. The help took care of it. It was just another night out on the town with my Dad.

THAT OLD 3 AM RAIL

by

Will Mayo

Once I took a stroll into a dying memory,

with two friends lying dead in the gutter

and with two pence in my one pocket.

All the barrios were shuttered.

No one would let me in.

And the lamplights were capped

with the cracked and fading glass of a broken bulb.

While windows of vandalized stores

were closed at half mast,

and people stared at a figure that set no cast,

I walked toward the grave of a bridge with no brine,

where I saw my shadow

lying on the railroad tracks,

waiting on the 3 AM train from East Central.

Within ten seconds of a narrow moon,

the locomotive came on by,

its coal burner set to fire on a broken stove,

and its wheels as high as the Mayor's house,

while steam pocked with specks of motes

poured from its chimney of cast iron.

And this old 3 AM rail trampled and cranked

over that dark shadow I'd once lost,

driving it into the ground,

down into the winter's layer of deep snow.

Then as the cars and cabs drove by and past,

over the hill and toward the valley of Monocacy,

I realized with my own regret and my own fear

that this train hadn't run in many a year.

And after minutes and seconds of waiting,

I reached down toward those crackling tracks,

and found my shadow,

somehow whole as if untouched,

but fragile like a friend.

I wrapped it about me like a warm coat,

as I left the grave of old 3 AM,

looking for a job and a companion,

while other mists and other shadows

rose from a bridge with no rail and no brine.

Women

By

Will Mayo

Speak in tongues lit by fire.

Turn their insides out

so that a man may know

what they want,

and cross the corners

so that he might never ask.

Give themselves over to riddles

and yet speak bluntly whenever possible.

Be ever-so distant in public

while given and giving

and vulnerable in private.

Simple courtesies and the mysteries of the night.

The splendor of the species.

Phantasmagoria

by

Will Mayo

When the voice aches from within.

When the man longs for the day's end.

Then as tomorrow seems only a daydream

and yesterday a mere phantom of a thought

it is that life itself is only a shadow of the living.

For then it is that no mirror reflects,

no stream shines with that ancient gaze.

And every footstep is a hammer for the corpse,

a drumbeat for the dying.

You stare into the glass upon the 3 am bell.

No face, living or dead, awaits your reflection.

For every light has blown away

and darkness is the shadow of the wavering candle.

When you wish to blow out the wakening ghost

and continue with living,

it is only the bell that stops you.

The sounds of the gongs within cymbals colliding

coincide with the beating of your heart.

Thunderclaps the mountain

and it is at such times that you wish you were only dreaming.

Home Again

by

Will Mayo

Then too I'll never forget how it was upon my second and last great adventure on the road back in 1977 when I asked my mother not long after we crossed the international border from Canada to the United States to pull over. Grudgingly, she pulled over and parked on the side of the road whereupon I got out and much to her and my sister's embarrassment got down on my knees and kissed the ground.


Good to be home again.