Two poems by Scott Thomas

MOON OVER WEST MOUNTAIN

Your mother and I watched last night
The moon clock out through West Mountain.
We could see her from the hospital
Swiping her time card
And slipping her pumpkin hips
Through the turnstile.
“Her shift is over,” we said,
“And here comes the day he will be born.”
If you are like your father,
Sleeplessness will coil in your body —
A tree trunk rippled with old barbed wire.
Foreign beds will yield no dreams.
Unfamiliar mountains at dusk
Always eat the moon at dawn,
And you will be awake, a lone witness.
Your friends on their pallets
Will dream oblivious.
Last night’s insomnia, though, was different.
I was neither alone nor hollowed out.
Your mother was wired into her bed
Attended by nurses. My blanket was thin,
But dawn was not a blanched monster
Nor the death of any chance for sleep,
But the slow rousing of the forest
Preparing the footpath for your approach.

CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE ABANDONED FACTORY

Through large windows set in concrete
Panes long removed,
Christmas sun;
No snow, brown grass,
Leafless sapling
Rooted in a cracked spillway.
Debris on a cold floor is not joyous.
Pubescent graffiti is not merry.
Abandoned machinery is hardly festive.

December 25th is not, by nature,
Endowed with Christmas.
Out here far from the highway
Down a crumbled road,
Utility poles unstrung,
It looks like any other afternoon near the solstice.
My footsteps crackle on shards.
Time to turn around.
I do not want to still be here
When I lose the light.

Scott Thomas has a M.S. in Library Science from Columbia University, and a M.A. in English from the University of Scranton. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the Scranton Public Library and an adjunct faculty member at Northampton Community College.
His work has appeared in Mankato Poetry Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, Webster Review, Poetry East, Poem, Philadelphia Stories, Floyd County Moonshine, Talking River, Pointed Circle, Plainsongs, Spoon River Poetry, and others. He lives in Dunmore, PA.