Selected poems from Cutting the Dusk in Half
By Thomas J. Erickson
Cover art (“Sunset at Second Creek”) Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey W. Jensen.
Thomas J. Erickson grew up in Kohler, Wisconsin. He received a BA in English Composition from Beloit College and a law degree from Marquette University. He is an attorney in Milwaukee, where he is a member of the Hartford Avenue Poets. His books of poetry are The Lawyer Who Died in the Courthouse Bathroom (Parallel Press), The Biology of Consciousness (Pebblebrook Press), Hailstorm Interlude (Finishing Line Press) and most recently The Lawyer Chronicles (Kelsay Press) in 2020. He is married to Daphne and is the proud father of Charles and John.
August
Covid gives me time to clean out the basement and go through
my sons’ boxes. By December, the death toll in the US will be
over 300,000.
Boxes of magic markers Johnny used to draw his anime persona
who languidly proclaimed, “I’m a superhero with no powers
and no motivation.” We need a vaccine for everybody:
7.8 billion human beings.
A suitcase unopened since Charles got back from France.
It’s completely empty. The death toll here is the most
in the world, more than the next three countries combined.
A teddy bear I haven’t seen in twenty years. I’d pitch
it but my wife wants to keep it so she washes him on gentle
and then spends most of Saturday night blow drying
him and fluffing out his pilly fur. 97,000 children have
gotten the virus in the last two weeks of July.
There’s even a broadside from one of my poetry readings
from years ago with this poem:
The Quiddity of a Thing
In this room, we pretended
this bed was a boat. We were
in the middle of a storm and I
rocked the mattress almost
tossing you off or I was a bridge
and you would crawl over me
above the dangers of Snake River.
In this room, there is a large bin
of Legos and building blocks.
We constructed our manors
and castles before tumbling them down.
In this room, the glow-in-the-dark
stars are falling from the ceiling
and there is a bed where we lay
on our backs and gazed
at the universe above our heads.
Poetry doesn’t comfort, it unsettles.
While outside, the bats are cutting the dusk
in half—to the past and the future—the beat
of their wings disappearing in the August sky.
If I hadn’t said to my son
If I hadn’t said to my son
let’s go pier-jumping on that spectacular day
in August he might not have almost drowned.
If he had drowned what would I do?
I would wait until the north waves
of Superior, the freezing forge of dark power,
wash his body ashore in the Spring
and if the gales had torn him apart, I would
use my magic rake to collect the limbs,
I’d sew him back together with my Sampo,
my wand of virgin pine only at home
in the wind. I am in thrall to the copses
and the marshes and the stones and I will sing
to the song of the killdeers on the beach who never
sing the same song twice and if my son had not yet
arisen, I would string my harp with the gullets of lake trout
and strum to the fields of trillium beneath the golden canopy
of Autumn birches and the five stars of Cassiopeia would hear
my song and pulse all the more with their pride
while I hammer on the vault of heaven to bring him back.
I never see anyone I know anymore at Summerfest, like the time I was
pissing in the trash can in a jammed men’s room when the guy across from
me looked up and said, “Hey man, aren’t you my lawyer?” Indeed, ‘twas
Carlos, an inveterate burglar client of mine.
Several months later, Carlos and I are sitting safely in a dismal courtroom in
a dismal building called the Safety Building. He’s about to get a couple of
years in prison and we have a few moments to relax before the judge takes
the bench. Carlos tells me it’s really not so bad in there. “I don’t have to make
any decisions and I can just sit there and think.” “Yeah.” I say, “that’s pretty
cool, I think.”
It’s almost noon by the time court is finished. I drive back to my office on a
sunny day in late October. My mental clock is racing: court appearances, my
children’s obligations, deadlines for this and that. Carlos already evaporating.