Maxwell’s Poetry Corner

Poetry by Maxwell Redder

 

MLR+DAM=MLR+DMR

As our eyes meet they signify the trust
we have earned, and I promise that that trust,
which is excavated from the precious mines of our souls,
will last beyond the life of stars.

I promise that our love will remain a river:
always flowing, always fueled.
I promise to keep you safe because your existence
dances in equilibrium with mine; we are one.

When you are torn, I promise to be the hand
behind the thread that mends you.

I promise we are bound by the glue of love.
I promise to be your warrior.
I promise that when you are down, I will exhaust
all my being to help you stand.
I promise that my duty as husband
is a gift unlike any I have received —
I will honor it forever.

Even when we return to dust,
I am certain our molecules will be holding hands
creating something solid
like we always have —
forever will.

 

Slate of Orange (Winter)

Under the first daunting slate of orange
I scrape the ice from my windshield,
my lungs ripping the last bits of moisture
from the air. Finishing, the slate seemed to flash
green before blue subjoined then sustained.

She’s arrived. Summer’s lost mistress.
Slipping in like would a snake a mouse hole;
unnoticed and ready to bite. She threatens
the blue slate with a fiercely quantum increase
of slathering unsaturated clouds.

Losing doesn’t exist in patterns of winning.
She’ll win. Her ice teeth loom on gutters
while children, clumsy in their bundles,
ecstatically drag neon sleds beneath; gleaming.
She’s a vexatious howling beast. Truly.

The electric-aluminum gray slate
lingering gorgeously like a wedding dress,
endlessly inviting, taunts just weeks away.
Driving through construction, I think
of my brother’s passing.  January.