Pat Hull: California Poets Part 8, Three Poems
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
Pat Hull
Three Poems
Why I didn’t dance with mother at my wedding
For starters, where would I put
my hands?
As you may have guessed, the hips
are out of the question
The shoulders?
Maybe a kind of double tricep
hook grip?
Like my baseball coach would use
to get me to focus.
Our hands cannot rest
in each other’s
for the simple fact that we don’t
speak tenderness.
Any elongated touch would send
shock waves
barreling through our damaged
nervous systems.
And then there was the song choice
to consider,
Rachmaninoff and Chopin being
her favorites.
Can you imagine?
For twenty minutes, watching two
fumbling bodies
stepping to their very own
funeral march?
Sleep
My daughter is three days old.
She is barking like a squirrel
in her sleep, eyes rolling around
like a broken compass, manically
frowning, then smiling; absolutely
horrific, but I can’t stop watching.
Whatever sleep is doing to her
I trust. I trust sleep more than any
set of hands, especially my own.
Godmother of repair, the strangest
of deities, rocking my sweet babies
for half their lives, maybe more
if they’re lucky.
Supermoon
Our car has broken down
again, unlike the moon,
reliable as ever. Wearing
creamsicle orange tonight.
Seems to be zooming in
as time spins us closer,
becoming enormous
and less like the shy rock
I made her out to be.
It is warm enough to sit
outside on the trunk
and be pointless.
Poverty made me a lover.
Though I wouldn’t
wish my life on anyone.
Don’t people work
their whole lives for
these moon moments?
Only just to get there
to have a polluted
stream of memories
run thick and strong
right through them.
September
I turned
into a whirling dervish type warrior,
spinning the same meaningful words
over and over
until they were meaningless and funny
sounding. I stopped to find you standing
all around me,
able to steady myself enough to see
a version of you that could be reached.
Our hands
will never tighten the screws on this
spinning jenny, but look at how
our love
continues to make strange woven
blankets with beat up machinery.
Bull Float
I barely know what’s going on.
They keep discovering
new galaxies.
The sixteen-year-old stands
lost with his shirt inside out.
The older men pour concrete,
And he leans on his bull float
with sleep in his eyes.
When we’re young we don’t
know what is going on.
Gifts arrive and they are not
the kind we need.
Every year the inflection rises
at the end of our thank-yous.
But even if this all stopped
and we headed back
to the charred forest to set
traps and track wolves,
we would still end the day
shivering under the vastness.
Author Bio:
Pat Hull is a songwriter and poet from Northern, CA. He received his bachelor’s degree in communication studies at Marist College, and a master’s degree in communication studies at CSU, Chico.
His first books of poetry, Sugar House and Field Notes on Love (A Collection of 99 Haiku), were independently published through music label Only one on the Mountain in February, 2023.
He teaches non-violent communication and speech communication at CSU, Chico and Butte College and is a devoted father of three children.
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