Truck June 2015: Three Poems by Gwyn McVay

The Grey-Streaked Hare

thumping hard against my fingers
your furry heart beats with my need
you sense it — do you not —

perhaps you are frightened
I hold the beastie to my breast
O, know you are safe —

you and your fast heart — within mine
such body heat — salty and constant


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All You Have To Do

You can pose but you don't have to pose
You can play your instrument or just sit
by the river with me and listen to that
You can toast me with your fizzing soda
or sip it quietly and just smile
You can tell me a story or just lie
next to me, I'll guard your dreams
You can do cartwheels, you can just be
the musclebound pony I saw striding
smooth as beach rock under a load
of all you possess and all you need own

If I have an orange you have half an orange
If I draw breath you have all my heart


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The Butterfly Effect

the roughest bastard,
born in a bear's den, will let
a butterfly sit

in the crook of his elbow,
watching its slightest beat


***

Gwyn McVay is the author of two chapbooks of poems and one full-length collection, Ordinary Beans (Pecan Grove Press). She has published poems and reviews in more than sixty periodicals and in three anthologies, most recently Letters to the World (Red Hen Press). She lives in southeastern Pennsylvania, where she teaches writing at Millersville University; three of her poems are in this year's volume of the university's literary magazine, George Street Carnival. 

Editor's Note on Truck, June 2015

June is a fine month for outdoor adventure, and I asked my Truck loaders to submit something that fit the rather loose topic of "playing outside." This has had fine and diverse results: playful haiku; meditative essays; an interview with artist Lewis Mark Grimes about the images he makes by physically and digitally arranging the naturally-shed feathers of endangered birds. (A careful reader may spot quite a few birds in this issue. This month's editor owns three pairs of binoculars and, while  she did not consciously intend these natural selections, does not apologize.)

Truck has also driven the reader to Scotland with James Johnston, a musician, currently touring the US with the Scottish tribal percussion-and-bagpipe band Albannach; an autodidact historian of Scotland and its centuries of convoluted politics; and, under the nom de hike Gentle James of the Glens, a trail guide and fixture in Scottish conservation and hillwalking circles. ("Hillwalking" is a Scottish euphemism for "everything but the most technically difficult mountain climbs; you probably won't need to bring oxygen.") The essay is a joyous travelogue, a man-meets-motorbike romance, and the reader's senses will send them flying down the highways on a vintage Triumph alongside Johnston.
 
I hope that in between reading the contributions piled in the back of the June Truck, the reader will go outside, even for a few breaths of coming rain, and enjoy the fleeting pleasures of dandelions -- and perhaps hear the murmur of grown-ups, sipping gin and tonic as they sit on the porch talking about grown-up things and watching distant storm clouds roll closer.

Gwyn McVay
June 2015