Why do I hold my clean hands
under hot water until they sting?
My tongue aches from rehearsals.
Silver chutes shoot my open eyes.
Stiff slanting wings lift our bodies
resting above clouds — breathing, dreaming.
Trust loosens our shoes, unpegs belts
cinched around our expanding profit motives.
Trust will settle us down to Earth.
Bright shields of elastic goose flesh.
Wet maps wrinkle in my hot palms.
I would dovetail all my hinges!
Lets love our flaws above each wave.
Counting freckles until we land alive.
About R. Steve Benson
While sitting, once a week in an old paint-spattered Ford in the mid fifties with his father who was a glider mechanic in Sicily during World War 2, R. Steve Benson listened to his dad invent playful funny words and stories to entertain him while his big brother Barry (co-author of their two published books of poetry: Schooled Lives: Poems By Two Brothers, and Poems By The Skunk River Valley Boys) was having his weekly private accordion lesson... Years later, Steve found a quote by the critic Helen Vendler: "The play of language is the chief cause for the aesthetic success of any poem." Thanks Dad!
