Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One November-December 2024
A Message to You, poems by Fred Everett Maus.
A Message to You
I address this poem to someone I can’t
write about yet, though you shared
my life, because we never finished
our talking—although we stopped
and it seems we won’t start now—
but until we clarify some things
(I doubt we will), our story is not
mine to tell.
I might say I don’t think of you, but I
started writing my dreams, and you
are here every night. Last night
we scurried along the dark street
through bushes, into porches,
ducking as we passed windows,
holding hands, trying not to giggle.
Someone, something wanted
to find us. We were like children playing.
The danger was real.
We were there and also I saw us
across the street—the sea-deep sky,
weak yellow streetlights, tender shadows.
Toward Winter
A tree quivered. A dog slept under it.
Branches swept across the sky.
So many leaves,
some on the trees, others
all around on the ground.
Too late to be shy.
Things were progressing.
No ice, but it was cold.
Quick birds dipped through space
between the roof and the trees.
When was something
supposed to happen –
or was this the moment,
as good as any other.
A baby separates from its mother,
through milky tantrums
and flights of power and rage,
or works at separateness, playing
softly in a special world,
not real, not unreal.
Leaves played like that, too,
gentle massage of the air
between earth and sky.
No one could contradict them.
They were happier than they knew.
Light slanted in late afternoon
across blades of grass,
long and floppy like rumpled hair.
Underneath, moles and voles,
grubs and worms,
another world, indifferent
to the emotion of oblique light.
Earlier, the edges of blossoms curled.
They’re gone now, like hummingbirds,
better not to mourn them but
look to what is here now,
soggy patches of yesterday’s snow
disappearing in the ground,
making a mess of the animals’ tunnels,
keeping everything alive.
Hey, Body
Startle me one more time. Let me see
something that left my mind.
There was that time the darkness
brushed against me. It made music.
Hey, Body, cool it.
It’s not like you protect me.
I’m sorry, I think
I went too far.
I’ll be here.
Hey, Body, are you
trying to lower my guard?
Are you trying to think for yourself?
Do you think we need a break?
Heh, just kidding.
Hey, Body, it’s great
the way you fall asleep.
I stroke your cheek and you
comfort me.
You know that you have always won.
If I want to forget you, I have to become you.
© Fred Everett Maus
Fred Everett Maus is a musician, writer, and teacher. They teach music classes on a range of topics, for example a recent course on “Music in Relation to Sexuality and Disability” and a recurring contemplative course “Deep Listening.” They are a trained teacher of mindfulness meditation and Deep Listening, and a student of music therapy and object relations psychoanalysis. They have published prose memoir, poetry, and fiction, for instance in Citron Review, Palette Poetry, Roanoke Review, Vox Populi, and Live Encounters. They live in a house in the woods north of Charlottesville, Virginia, and in Roma Norte, Mexico City. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness, which they co-edited with the late Sheila Whiteley, was published in 2022. The Handbook received the 2023 Philip Brett Award for “exceptional musicological work in the field of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual studies.”