HOODWINKER
No wife, no mother, so I hoodwinked my son,
a damaged kid. I wore grayish talons and
the penalties have grown stiff—no balms and
only wisps of grassiness sewn into dreams.
Woo Woo sings Joni, thin and high. Drifts
curve behind the boat-house and one cedar
hangs like a falling axe over the snow. I took
him up, led him on, and left him in a white
metal crib. But there was no thicket, no ram,
so I was the trickster. Was it my voice? Was
there no chapel for prayer? The seasons go
round and round and O, it weights me—
I led the way. May I investigate miraculous
repentances? May I forgive myself?
HOODWINKER by Thomas R. Moore | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser
Thomas R. Moore’s fifth book of poems, Stones, was published in 2021. He is four times a Pushcart nominee and in 2018 “How We Built Our House” won a Pushcart Prize. His work has been broadcast on Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. He taught at universities in Iran, Turkey, Mali, and the US, and his work is included in the 2018 Best of the Small Presses Anthology. He has published over a hundred poems in various literary journals.
