Matthew Brennan

Snow*Vigate
Issue 2 : Winter, 2007

Guidelines

Snowvys

January Sunset, Five P.M.

Matthew Brennan

After weeks of cold, asphalt skies,
The winter sun is lighting up
The wooden slats of the neighbor’s fence
And gilds a tree limb reaching north
Toward streets entombed already in darkness.

But the sun is weak, like an old man,
Housebound and dying, who despairs
Of getting better by the end of March
When his garden grows its greenness back:

It will happen only in his dreams, the moon
Ghostly above his empty home.

Matthew Brennan

The Weakest Link

Is stronger than the best of memories.

But when an old man dies, a library
Burns. My grandfather, born before
The light bulb, has been lost to us now

For thirty years--and what he knew in 1890
We will never know. Stacks upon
Stacks of novels, maps, and marginalia

Are now less than ashes. Even the names
Of his parents’ parents, like lettering
On kindled papers, are inked in darkness.

Matthew Brennan’s poems have appeared in The Sewanee Review, South Dakota Review, Notre Dame Review, and other journals. Besides two previous collections of poems, he has two forthcoming: The House with the Mansard Roof (Backwaters Press) and The Sea-Crossing of Saint Brendan (Birch Brook Press).