The trees lean as they will—
left, right, or somewhere in the middle.
The are rooted deep, casting honest shadows,
quiet, patiently growing this way and that;
together making a forest
more beautiful by their differences.
The creek hurries forward,
cutting through without permission,
clutching every fallen scrap—
a leaf, a stone,
the smallest rumor of soil.
It knows only the truth it gathers around itself,
its surface bright with conviction,
blind beyond its own course.
Above, the sky endures—
it has watched storms trade hands,
knows the trees for what they are,
knows the restless babbling of water,
and remains slow to judge,
as many are—those wise and open skies,
older than the arguments below.
The corn was a city of dry, golden bones, standing coldly
as daylight bled out like a fresh wound on the leaking horizon.
I walked in, the path closing behind me like an old faint scar
and then I heard it, a whisper, the sound of molded silk tearing,
an ominous muttering among the papery battle banners,
and it was then that I became fully aware, something paced me,
keeping just beyond my sight, footsteps rustling like turning pages,
and I was the trespasser in a library of decay, suddenly
I was the story, food for the lost souls hungry to read.
(for Lt. Col. Boyd D. “Buzz” Wagner)
It must have felt strange, letting the world fall from your hands—
that first skyward yaw pulling the wheels from the ground,
Johnstown shrinking to hills and smokestacks below,
and the wide sky, waiting with arms outstretched.
You were a boy with steel wings and quiet eyes,
flung far from home, drawing fire in churning skies,
and through that hellish heaven above,
eight names fell behind your streaking shadow—
planes broken and folded into silence,
your guns unstitching their borrowed air.
They called you the first ace—
because we saw who you really were,
the first to rise and not come back the same.
A poet once wrote, something does not love a wall,
and the sky is no different. The impossible
weight of metal surrendered to the wind,
pulling glory from the sky, the same weight
that breaks all our heroes.
And in the January cold, when you came home to Johnstown,
the town surged forward, and stood still for you,
twenty thousand strong,
lining the winter streets in silence and frozen breath.
Still, we carry your memory like a warm flame,
and lest we forget, it is etched in Grandview stone.
Even the sky remembers with each passing breeze—
airy whispers drifting over your grave.
And when we pass by and read your name,
we pause and glance once more toward the sky—
our hearts pulled upward, as if we might leave the ground
to feel what it meant to rise and not come back the same.
©Glenn Lyvers 2025
(“Buzz” is buried in Grandview Cemetery, Johnstown, PA)
after the battle
fields of mustard flowers bloom
deserters return
Fog hems the ocher backwater
like hoar frost on Georgia clay —
as the lodestar fades
against the breaking of a wailing sky,
rare winter lightning
flashes against a sea of granite
flags — the broken rear guard.
We are instant saints, lifting mother’s
ornate box — our scuffling boots
mimic the sound of dragging a mime
to the cadence of father’s walking stick,
its distant tapping calling her home —
a moment too solemn, too discreet.
Then suddenly a red dog appears
running wildly between tombstones,
its body pulsing to the rhythm
of its sagging tongue, and a girl
no more than seven kneels
with a glass of water, smiling
as the irreverent dog drinks loudly.
©2023 Glenn Lyvers
Now a poet in my 50th year,
I have settled on the mountain –
and I ponder the gentle streets,
the silent-blue church spires
and the listless Conemaugh.
Here, among the Alleghenies,
in a chair near the jukebox,
I spent a year sipping lager,
a parishioner to the vibrations
of a Johnstown congregation.
Each night someone is there
feeding the hopeful jukebox,
Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen,
as the thinning light births stars
over the wild onion side
of the mountain, reflecting
the rail-lights of the Inclined Plane –
and every evening someone new comes in,
and they are regaled with stories
about relentless rains and the flood,
and the way people were grasped
by the hands of the raging river,
flung sideways like flat rocks
skipping over water and water.
The words ring gently poetic
across the bar, with a voice
so familiar it feels like your own,
and it penetrates your very heart
as naturally as lightning seeks the ground,
and the artfulness fills me with hope
that someday I will write this well,
pierce as deeply as the poets at the bar.
