Two Poems After Jason Baldinger, by Robert L. Dean, Jr

Hinton, West Virginia, photography by Jason Baldinger (USA) 2022

Heaven From Here
by Robert L. Dean, Jr. (photo: Hinton, West Virginia, by Jason Baldinger)

The train arrives, or, not quite, really,
still belching, no squeal of iron on iron,
no one there to hear it, platform empty,

the sign of who we are backwards, perhaps
we have been or will be or are passed by,
history on display at the Ritz, an audience of

ghost chairs, stacking metal and vinyl banquet
on mosaic Depression tile, floral pattern
long wilted, like us, are we in or out,

we can’t make up our minds, maybe we’ll turn
left, maybe right, one arrow pointing us
toward the train, the other in the direction

it is headed, or was headed, or we remember it
being headed, or would remember, if we were still
here, still performing, still listening for the whistle

of time rolling in, the drum-drum heartbeat of
shako-plumed youth celebrating whatever it is
we used to celebrate, lamp-post flags waving

once again in the breeze that is surely locomoting in
on the dark underbelly of sky, one lone tourist
trying to capture us, ghost that he is and always will be.

Walkersville, West Virginia, photography by Jason Baldinger (USA) 2022

The Hang Up
by Robert L. Dean, Jr. (photo: Walkersville, West Virginia, by Jason Baldinger)

They hear it in Ohio, Pennsylvania,
the cotton fields of the Llano Estacado,
the gator lands of south Florida,
the bottom of Crater Lake. Tsunami
warnings siren across the Pacific. Three mountains
in the Hindu Kush implode. Blood stains

your connection to civilization. You didn’t know
Bakelite could cut so deep. It’s 1983
and she’s told you don’t call her again,
no matter if you’re lost in the woods in Hicksville,
or wherever, falling off a cliff. Sinking in quicksand,
goodbye, good riddance, good God.
Hasn’t she had enough. Haven’t you.

And here you are, four decades, three divorces,
two heart attacks, six grandkids later,
a middle of nowhere return, sanity hanging
by a thread, you wish you could pick it up,
put it back together, punch the right numbers,
say I’m sorry, wondering, isn’t life funny, how you found
it again, how this thing is still here, your anger, your

hang up, if only you’d known. Leaves rustle. Wind blusters
in the open window. You start the car, head for the Interstate,
that lunatic asylum you saw in Weston. Shuttered now,
tourists and ghost hunters only, poems of the lost
tattooed on therapy room walls. You happen to have
a crayon on you. In the rear view, the phone rings.

Robert L. Dean, Jr

Robert L. Dean, Jr.’s poetry collections are Pulp (Finishing Line Press 2022); The Aerialist Will not be Performing: ekphrastic poems and short fictions to the art of Steven Schroeder (Turning Plow Press, 2020); and At the Lake with Heisenberg (Spartan Press, 2018). A multiple Best of the Net nominee and a Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared in many literary journals. Dean is a member of the Kansas Authors Club and The Writers Place. He has been a professional musician, and worked at The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Augusta, Kansas, midway between the Air Capital of the World and the Flint Hills.