Timothy Pilgrim

Shadow burial

Timothy Pilgrim

Horizon jagged near sundown, I stop tottered trek, find clearing, stream, make fire, camp.

With luck, I’ll outlast night. Squawk of jays in tree conjures back my boyhood life — father of father,

abuelo — his memory flares, immerses me in what sowed hate. Not dismissive back of hand,

fast, hard, on pimpled face. Nor scorn sprayed for chores left undone, irreverent talk, refusal to pray.

More, ferity seen as I lay tall-grassed by willows lining bank of creek. Laddered, high, Abuelo reaches deep

through leaves, magpie nest, babies, beaks eager to eat — one by one, strokes each a bit,

rips tiny head off slim black neck. Blood-spurt memory beset fifty years hence, I namaste

my wrinkled hands, breathe in, hum low to bury this shadow. I forgive him, then forget.

Fear on the way out

Timothy Pilgrim

FOMO, as some would text, short for Fear Of Missing Out,

has little to do with differences, say, between prophet — knowing

the end is near — and profit gained from a lottery win

just before the denouement. It’s more a powerful form of worry —

perhaps about brooding whether one is a cuckolder of diminutive stature,

giver of lesser heart-panged slights. Or, akin to Odysseus worrying

if he should choose sirens over home. Certainly powerful enough

to prompt any stable person to leave a perfectly good life at halftime.

Timothy Pilgrim, Montana native and Pacific Northwest poet, has a few hundred acceptances from U.S. journals such as Seattle Review, San Pedro River Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Santa Ana River Review, and international journals such as Windsor Review and Toasted Cheese in Canada, Prole Press in the United Kingdom, and Otoliths in Australia. He is the author of Seduced by metaphor (2021).