Climbing
I said we were going to climb that mountain all the way to the top some day Show him what it feels like to touch the sky
Heart
In the courtyard I read aloud the inscriptions on the tombstones: "Tobias Hart Born 1801 Died 1874 Never too old to die of a broken heart" "Dad, isn't that kind of funny, died of a broken heart?" Yeah kind of
Waterville N.Y. 1968
Late April, the earth reveals furrowed rows, seedling corn stalks, barren trees sprouting leaves, flocking black birds that eat the coming water colored Spring.
Covered Bridge
Hiking Adirondack trails we paused, resting between pine trees, down below, a ruined covered bridge overgrown with vines and brush, loose hanging rotten boards, sunlight spearing worn, sagging wood, a pulsing rain swollen river pressing through jutting, fallen cliff rock, washing out links, networks of roads that lead nowhere
Deserted Homestead Still Life, Remsen, N.Y. 1970
Rising smoke layers endless fields of long thin weeds, blown close to the earth, once rich furrowed fields, rows of cultivated crops a farmer watched turning grey at dusk: "Down there," he would say to his family, "Is something solid. Life." Overturned, dispatched by world wars, bad years without rain, years beating back governments, bank foreclosure notices with shots of whiskey and beer. All land becomes a yard that leads nowhere between weathered split rails. From the collapsed, unpainted porch, looking down through the broken windows, fallow fields are full of fire, a dead man's hands turns the earth with a horse drawn plow, one lost soul among many, at home, at last, feeling the land fill his fallow bones with heat.
Deserted Barn at Night
Dried, split bales of hay spill out from the barn wrecked by years of bad weather and neglect, sinking into the earth, awaiting more wet rotting rain or drought, awaiting the black bats that color the sky, that fill sagging rafters, hanging down, a dark eye, skin of the night.
Alan Catlin is primarily known for poetry but that doesn’t prevent him for mixing and matching prose and poetry as the subject allows. He has published dozens of full-length book and chapbooks, mostly poetry, over the years. Although he is not a genre writer, he has somehow managed three Rhysling Prize nominations and a Bram Stoker Award nomination He didn’t win either award.
Rural Fiction Magazine 