Jeff Weddle

And So It Goes

Naked and forgetting
the safety of sheets
she stands by
a dirty window
of dead flies
and open curtains

gazing at
the half-empty
parking lot.

A young man
walking to his car
fails to notice
her accidental gift
of beauty

his mind caught
on the one
he has abandoned
in a different room

while her puzzled lover
asks again
why she has left the bed

and the young man
starts his car
and pulls away

with no idea
where the night
will take him

and she says aloud
she is not sure
why she was
ever there
at all.

Visiting Home 

On the church steps
with grey and purple clouds
and the night songs
of animals
cars going somewhere
with their lights and noise
fireflies and a man running
as my father
back at the house
is caught
in a failing body
barely able to move
in his ancient black recliner
and my mother watches him
for signs of need
but seeing none
settles on
cleaning his denture
in this last
bit of smoke
when we are all
still alive
trying to understand
each mystery
except
how lonely
the end can be

Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the 2007 Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.