Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Skate Creek



image borrowed from bing


Skate Creek

I lost ten hours last week
and that missing time
transcends logic.

I had started off 
on one of my day hikes
in the Cascades, walking the trail
along Skate Creek.

I had started at 9 a.m., preferring
the loneliness of hiking solo, 
and after a few halcyon miles 
I remember an odd hum 
near a large cedar tree,

then an overwhelming sense of
tingling vibrations, and the next thing
I was fully aware of was sitting
on a wet log in a strange clearing.
It was late, the sun very low in the West;
glancing at my watch it was 7 p.m.

I began to be aware of things, like
my Mariners sweatshirt was on backwards,
both of my thumbs had large coagulated
pinprick bubbles on them,
my head was throbbing,
my body was quivering,
my right wrist had a purple welt
like a pain bracelet around it.

My mind was squirming like
a garden snake under a boot,
but I felt there was some kind
of mental partition between
my self and my short term memory,

then suddenly I shivered violently
as I recalled the dark room,
the large gray faces
and the terrible dead black eyes.

Glenn Buttkus

October 2012

Posted over at flipside records
Posted over at dVerse Poets OLN

Would you like to hear the author read this poem to you?

12 comments:

Claudia said...

oh heck...some mysterious happenings here...first when you mention the hum i thought about a wasp attack...never hike alone...strange things can happen..just saying...smiles

hedgewitch said...

Scary stuff, Glenn--great aura of mystery to this.

vivinfrance said...

Glenn, you took me with you all the way up to the last stanza - feeling and hearing through your senses. The last few lines turned it into a nightmare, and I shivered.

flipside records said...

Great opening:
"I lost ten hours last week
and that missing time
transcends logic."

I love this transition:
"I began to be aware of things, like my Mariners sweatshirt was on backwards"

And your haunting ending, leaving us so much to wonder about:
"and the terrible dead black eyes"

Brian Miller said...

well now you took quite a turn there in the end...so just which probes did they use....you might not want to remember that part...ha....this was so alive you suckered me in...i love nature too...but great twist sir...

Anonymous said...

Aliens perhaps? well done write Glenn.

Tashtoo said...

Seriously! I'm going to have nightmares of probes now...losing ten hours seems to be an almost everyday occurrence in my world...I usually come to behind a desk ;) Aliens seriously freak me out though...and once again your storyteller spirit shines through.

Anonymous said...

whoa.
this one gave me serious goosebumps.
amazing work

Anonymous said...

Oh wow... little bit of X-files... love the mystery.

Rick.Daddario said...

aloha Glenn - this feels to me like an attempt at escaping the self and the memory of a moment(s).

moments of death latch deep in our memory and i can understand the attempt to gain a perspective - through the solo hike - that allows a momentary reprieve. because in any death if we look too close... close enough to see into those riveting empty dead eyes - we see the shortness of our own life too.

of course the setting too... we see so much now about areas where death has occurred or been left in sparse habitation areas... makes one wonder who this person is... chilling.

aloha.

Beachanny said...

Poetic story telling, mysterious, painful and leaving the reader curious and as discontent as the protagonist here. Good stuff.

hyperCRYPTICal said...

Oh heck - hope your rear end is not too sore :o]

Lovely stuff Glenn.

Anna :o]