Poems by Tyler Wettig
© 2021 Tyler Wettig
thirdipress.wordpress.com
The print edition of this book was designed by the author using Microsoft Publisher and reproduced at the Washtenaw Community College Copy Center.
Fonts used: Arial, Palatino Linotype, Garamond, and Kristen ITC.
Cover art by J.H.
Also by Tyler Wettig:
Men in Togas Looking at Fruit (Zetataurus Press, 2016)
The Adult Table (Zetataurus Press, 2018)
Babylon Burning (Third I Press, 2020)
https://www.tylerwettig.wordpress.com
https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/tyler_wettig
Fallen
The author thanks the following publications in which the poems in this volume originally appeared, sometimes in different forms:
Paths, Calla Press, Commonplace, Going Viral, Lost Pen Magazine, and
CONTENTS Stepping into Sandals 2 For All Times 3 Third Date 4 Emmaus 5 Grace 6 Revelation 7 Hosea 8 Reflection 9
1
Ancient
Macrina Magazine.
Stepping into Sandals
I believe a morning prayer is just this: conversation. There’s myself, humiliated saviors, and the disbelief we share.
Now the morning hours: we circle silent like Stonehenge before my stepping into sandals, always by my bedside, into light of the latest day.
I was probably dreaming about Grandparents, gone seven years now—as I do most nights— of their great fêtes and paintings I hang in my own rooms.
I’m stepping into weekends, my worst days, and my wife is awake now. The sheets, still pressed
shall I tell her I’m not here?
2
Reader my reader the answer shall not come in the vagueities of this poem nor the mire of this very oeuvre.
It shall come jejune in the etchings of the fugue of our days and these days, alone.
It shall come cri de coeur by the night just as it is written and it is good.
It shall come with patience, patience the after of all times is only just forever.
For All Times
3
Third Date
We broached the formalities, questioned indefinites, and the crooks of our smiles made infinity.
4
Once in a great while, my wife asks me to write a poem about her. This poem, my dear – dear friends, readers – will not be so; for you see, it is already written.
Yes, poems, innumerable, are the very aches of my feet, back, wrists by each new dawn; yellow of the nails and toes: the sun; and tomorrow: my own Christ’s Peter in the lake, his bliss: “It is the Lord!”
This tells me, by first and last light, that I am still a poet, or just alive. Or maybe, God of this world, I’m just dumb now, and forevermore.
Emmaus
5
Grace
Marriage asks, indiscriminate: who dies first? The human Christ, of his many doubts, would posit nothing by the flesh alone. Surely I am no fool, Lord but I beseech that you know this well, like all other things. If there is no time hours and days, those trivialities then I pray you not make it. Likewise, what would take you, from my shroud, in remembrance of me?
Yesterday and tomorrow and always, fallen saviors: my legs, my feet, "my misery."
6
Revelation
I declared, “the dark days are here” and it was so. “Go: make sets of keys, my love, but keep our locks unabated.”
7
November ’19
Life-lover, yours was the hour and the kingdom. Said Matthew to the flesh, “be ready,” and this was a gift, and it was good.
The free gift, reader, is not these words: not what they mean to you here, now, in this place.
The clock on my wall was a gift: it plays music to tell the time. If there is no light, it plays no music: the blind are the blind in all things.
Do you understand? A call to your savior is the quotidian lest you be judged.
Hosea
8
Reflection
In a glint of many hours, I shall want for everything of the flesh, with a keenness for the cross by cool of day. Here: bring a garden
to my feet and ask no questions for in the beginning, there is denial.
When I stave my communion, tell me that even Jesus had supper.
When my ears are closed, play Richter’s dexterous Handel (the organ concertos).
Death, my love, is a buil on the wailing wall of our quintessence. Then, look!
I am up from contrite out of sin, and into light.
9
Third I Press: 2021
