December 9, 2023

Trent Busch

THE ORDINARY MAN

The ordinary man sat at a table
in the darkness. Not that he didn’t
like the music, not that he didn’t
like the red dancers in the light.

The truth is he liked them very much;
he sat in his dark shoes and kept
time with his fingers on his glass.
He smiled and nodded approval.

The ordinary man didn’t mind
the green hair of the dancers, the thin
legs and deep skirts, the creased pants
in limbo below the simple bar.

It was a dark table where he sat.
He smiled and drummed his fingers,
nodding approval, as if he
didn’t care what part he was of the show.

from Rattle #34, Winter 2010

__________

Trent Busch: “It seems to me it takes great courage to be comfortable in being ordinary. I don’t mean an ordinary person; I mean an extraordinary person who is comfortable being ordinary. It seems to me there might be worse things.”

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July 14, 2021

Trent Busch

WHAT USED TO BE THERE

Now, no one lives on the ridges;
houses up the hollow have slumped
into themselves and rabbits feed
above on grass in the cemetery.

After my father’s stroke, they put
him in a kind of harness at
the rehabilitation center,
advised a trip out for dinner.

On TV, which he can’t follow,
the sitcoms are about families
we don’t recognize, unfamiliar
as the reruns of The Waltons.

In the rockers on the porch I talk
to him of the willows breaking
into green above the swollen  
creeks, redbuds pinking the hardwoods.

I could just as well be talking
about a dried-up town where there
was only the taste of salt for
daughters, the saccharine need for

working sons, where wearing a life
was tuneless, decent nights and days 
with no thought of memorial.
I could just as well be silent.

from Rattle #72, Summer 2021
Tribute to Appalachian Poets

__________

Trent Busch: “I have published over 400 poems and most of them are based on my growing up in rural West Virginia. In fact, my latest book is called West Virginians. When I write, I can never get away from that Appalachian influence.”

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April 25, 2020

Trent Busch

DARK COATS

Bright as a red dress on
a drab street to the eye
I was once to the stopped
moment when she, as I,

saw others in a mist
of dark coats going
to and from work or at
Christmas time in and out

of shops alone trying
to find right presents in
a world that was not right,
someone lost or gone.

Now I, as she, the one
gone, not a flash but bar
of cloud after the red
has gone from the sunset

before moonrise, after
the bird has disappeared
from the horizon, settled
in the pond’s tall grass.

The one who hears the fly
before death, though we are
not dying, who on the trip
home (cause long ago

ended), watches from modern
windows the quiet fields
passing, fallen into
the colors that sleep there.

from Rattle #30, Winter 2009

__________

Trent Busch: “I wrote ‘Dark Coats’ many years ago; I do not remember the circumstances, thus increasing my pleasure at what to me is a situation wonderfully sad. Surprised by joy, I view it now not as a writer but a reader, and hope it, as all my poems, is not crippled by relevance and time.”

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