Mark Lee Webb was born in Kentucky but grew up in California,
and he still carries memories of the Santa Monica Mountains and the hills of Agoura in his heart. A writer and photographer, he has studied poetry with Fred Smock (Bellarmine University) and Jim Harms (WVU), and he is an active participant in the Writers Workshop Project led by Michael Jackman. He’s the Poet Laureate of Woodlawn Park and co-founder of the Salon du Kinloch. His poems have appeared in Four and Twenty, Wilderness House, and elsewhere. He now lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, folk musician Molly McCormack, and three spoiled cats.
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Hot Times
Summer time drips
like that ten cent
Tastee Freeze
soft serve
with the chocolate
dip, when you were
two and the three
of us sat on wrought
iron chairs, chins
wiped off
on hands
wiped off
on Bermuda shorts
sticking to pink
and white candy
striped cushions.
Her Name May Have Been
She was a girl then nine or ten
when we lived on Rosemont Court
and I have not seen her
since nineteen sixty four.
Her name was Alice.
Or Sue.
She crossed the two lane
one day late when she saw me
alone after school.
We played in the
Buechel East Highlands
Third United Methodist Church
parking lot until five.
She had to go.
For dinner
she said,
promising to return
and play some more.
After supper I sat
on the curb
and waited.
Juerga
Spanish Bayonet bushes
along fence lines offer little
shelter from the burning
sun for Low Country
tomato field workers,
but yesterday, Labor
Day, they gathered
down at the shore
in the shade of the pier,
sunlight leaking through
knot-holed planks above.
The men set down
their burdens,
reclined in the sand,
watched a young woman
nudging an ice cream cart
along the beach.
Long body tanned
blond hair braided,
she strained to see
into the veiled light
below the platform.
As she came closer
to the edges
of darkness –
the sand cooling
beneath her feet,
she pushed the
cart cautiously around
the holiday juerga,
spinning Dreamsicles
and Rainbows away
from the shadows
under the pier.
Spanish Bayonet bushes
along fence lines offer little
shelter from the burning
sun for Low Country
tomato field workers,
but yesterday, Labor
Day, they gathered
down at the shore
in the shade of the pier,
sunlight leaking through
knot-holed planks above.
The men set down
their burdens,
reclined in the sand,
watched a young woman
nudging an ice cream cart
along the beach.
Long body tanned
blond hair braided,
she strained to see
into the veiled light
below the platform.
As she came closer
to the edges
of darkness –
the sand cooling
beneath her feet,
she pushed the
cart cautiously around
the holiday juerga,
spinning Dreamsicles
and Rainbows away
from the shadows
under the pier.
Signs
At the end of Black Rock Trail
in the White Tank Mountains
I find markings
on granite boulders
hidden behind cholla
and brittlebush –
an arrow painted
in faded cactus greens
pointing perhaps the way
to a sheltering cave,
or else where the best trees
with acorns can be found
in the fall,
or water.
As I search canyon rocks and cliffs
encountering a charcoal black
beast with horns,
discovering a star
next to a faded snaking
berry red line,
I’m startled by a rustling behind me –
a killdeer stumbling about
feigning injured wing.
And farther down the trail –
twilight winds
sweeping my footprints
from the desert.