I Catch Things

1978: Baseballs out in right field when I was 10... sometimes.
Voices stirring out over a lake in Autumn
When I camped with Uncle Jerry,
His Pall Mall glowing as he told his stories
About girls and boys.

1995: Sunlight and glare and
That marine dust drifting in the Atlantic
In Key Largo. I swam deep for the sand.
I saw a starfish.

1982: The flu, too, of course for four days...
And space spores ready to burst in my dreams,
Tiny microorganisms dancing inside. I saw them.

1999: The skulls of crickets, of wrens, of squirrels
When I walked in the woods:
The terrapin plates groaning under the floor,
The light from moons reflecting
other days, some kind of laughter.

2003: Words from a student who
stirs quietly against the wall,
words like fireflies.

1980: What my mom and dad said in the kitchen
As I hid under them in the crawl space...
That secret about them... that secret about me.

John Bush teaches in Georgia and has had poetry appear in 2River View, Del Sol Review, Story South, and The Comstock Review, among others. His interviews with Billy Collins, Peter Elbow, and Lee Odell appear at Critique Magazine.