Thread of the Real

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Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, is the author of eleven collections of poetry in addition to the 53 new poems presented in Thread of the Real.

Winter Sunrise Outside a Café Near Butte, Montana

A crazed sizzle of blazing bees
in the word EAT. Beyond it,
thousands of stars have faded
like deserted flowers in the thin
light washing up in the distance,
flooding the snowy mountains
bluff by bluff. Moments later,
the sign blinks, winks dark,
and a white-aproned cook —
surfacing in the murky sheen
of the window — leans awhile
like a cut lily … staring out
into the famished blankness
he knows he must go home to.

Channel One

At times our mind burns
like a TV turned on low
in the next room. A crow’s
cackle gets through the noise,
but the hummingbird’s whir’s
drowned out. Why the mind
tunes in to just one channel
is a mystery. But day after day
it delivers up the same thin
shadow-dance, the same
jingles and canned laughter —
then dreams it all over all night.