Bruce Lowry

A Louisiana native, Bruce Lowry is a reader, writer and searcher in the vein of Walker Percy. His work has been published widely, including in Poet Lore and Dos Passos Review, and lately in The Night Heron Barks and Louisiana Literature. His poetry collection, “Salvage,” was published in 2022. His chapbook, "Boyhood, Louisiana" was published by Platform Review Press in 2019. In a previous life, he was an award-winning opinion journalist and columnist. He currently lives in Summit, New Jersey.

Ages of Houses

Today I watched the sun go down

betraying its secrets of mushroom and barley

– other soups of the season.

I could not make out all of it.

Leaning into the last lap on the cinder track

I was upset by the ages of houses --

Craftsman colors and smells

stained wood, old metal

brown grease and bicycle chains

the late-evening whistle of my childhood friend

who did not believe in moon landings.

Then the space shoe came down in loud sound – red crunch

at my feet and chatter 

of migrants working barefoot

in the vineyard of a place I’d never seen.

Each one of us chewing up scenery

the good tears of Virgil in our eyes and hands  

managing to cross the meridian 

into the sea and the beds of the urchins.

Green Lake

The monarch butterflies rise early on the lake

their motion a black and jack o’ lantern frenzy 

– all chaos and libertine. 

These once were Roman soldiers at march

on the African plain, going months

without food or water or women.

They are hard, hardened, and yet I marvel at how

they find their joy 

no matter the guests at the party. 

My fear is they will not outlast us,

we bowls of clay so weary from our road

we can’t see them.

Autumn’s morning is upon us,

and somehow they will hardly know it.