Tag: caleb coy

Posted on

Ah, Life – Caleb Coy

Ah, Life

Ah, says the sighing sage, Life.

You have to taste it in the deed,

Make time for it by letting go.

Screw that, says the cynic, the salesman.

You have to have a leg up on the vermin who desert

         a sinking vessel.

You have to do what is best for yourself.

So, therefore, one must have the time of one’s life

         now,

While the vermin still crawl in the crannies,

While the ship is still afloat.

The sage and the cynic meet to trade secrets,

to agree.

As the hull scrapes against the rock,

As the water seeps in,

As the vermin fly in droves and the bow tips upward,

Tell yourself

         this is the beginning of the thing        

not the end of it.

—

Caleb Coy is a freelance editor with a Masters in English from Virginia Tech. He lives in Christiansburg, VA with his wife and two sons. His work has appeared in The Common, Stonecoast Review, and Harpur Palate.

Posted on

Here on Earth – Caleb Coy

Here on Earth

I said I know you never meant to do

         the thing you did.

He said, I know that, I know that,

But as a consequence of my deeds

And the boulder I set rolling,

         a pure good thing

         is gone from here,

And it’ll never return here again.

I mean here on earth, not here in this town.

I said, I know that, I know that.

—

Caleb Coy is a freelance editor with a Masters in English from Virginia Tech. He lives in Christiansburg, VA with his wife and two sons. His work has appeared in The Common, Stonecoast Review, and Harpur Palate.

Posted on

Detour – Caleb Coy

Detour

Worms eat the belly and freshen the soil

To reconcile, to breed blooming flowers,

And call them a masterpiece—

This is tramping in God’s garden.

Sensible, though it is, to say she has spoken,

An echo sublime, a material reflection,

The path into her muffles into darkness—

Not this way. Not in the brambles.

Terror and folly, awe and mystery

Choke the spirit of searchers,

Their counsel tangled in time,

In the depth of undiscovered stretches.

Here we turn. Here we take the byway.

Leave the wood, leave the peaks, leave the beaches,

Return to the tongues of men and of angels,

Return to the temple of the prostrate self.

Lest the image become the object,

Lest we return again to whispering horns,

Or we wander in dimness of words

And swallow the wormwood within the honey.

—

Caleb Coy is a freelance editor with a Masters in English from Virginia Tech. He lives in Christiansburg, VA with his wife and two sons. His work has appeared in The Common, Stonecoast Review, and Harpur Palate.

Posted on

Blackberries – Caleb Coy

This is the first of four poems that we will be sharing from Caleb. We hope you enjoy reading his words over the next few days just as we did during the editing process.

Blackberries

I turned blackberries from the stem

On down the brambled row,

Ripe and bulging,

Silver in the sun of evening.

Beetles had come to drink,

Sometimes four on a single berry.

You must blow them off

Or risk the smashing of all.

My fingers stained with soft

Labor, my bucket half full,

I wipe my brow at the end of the row

And carry my glean to the stand.

Later, I return with white raspberries,

My blackberries having been taken.

The farmer offers me his own picked bushel,

But it is not the same.

—

Caleb Coy is a freelance editor with a Masters in English from Virginia Tech. He lives in Christiansburg, VA with his wife and two sons. His work has appeared in The Common, Stonecoast Review, and Harpur Palate.