Tyree Daye
Two POEMS
Ode to Small Towns
This is where all the roadside memorials are,
pink wreaths and dirty teddy bears.
This is where a man walked when he wanted to fly.
This is where he laid down and later died.
This is where the train tracks folded the town in half.
This is where that man who died loved a woman,
that’s his heart you hear not the train.
This is where I kissed at a cardinal.
This is where I ran and did not know why.
This is where I believe a dog is buried.
This is where I danced in the long moonlight of a field.
This is where a woman planted peppers.
This is where she tide her blood with root water.
This is where you can see the whole town.
This is where the moon never goes.
This is where my grandmother hid some dreams.
This is where my dead may have met.
This is where they’ll bury me.
This is where I shot a bird from a tree.
This is where it fell.
Ode to a Common Clothes Moth
FOR DE LISA
In these days of less and less sun your love points and I follow
like the blind moths you beg me not to kill
half asleep and the sun lesser than a minute before
I’ll let you go into the night you say and I follow your love
of winged things to the back door
to watch you empty your hands into the sky
In the morning you will wake before me
and walk out into the yard
the sun acts like a father as if it never left
moths sing of you from where ever
moths go to sing
Tyree Daye is a poet from Youngsville, North Carolina. He is the winner of the 2017 APR/Honickman First Book Prize for his book River Hymns (APR, 2017).