Poetry

By Bradley McIlwain 

Bonney's Song

I thought I saw his ghost once, a little out Fort Sumner way

singing sad ballads with his back toward the wind,

six guns no longer on his waist – he died an unarmed man.

 

You could still see the bullet hole when the sun would hit it,

a little below the left clavicle. Billy shot a broad smile when

he caught me looking, the way he used to before he died –

 

the one that made him famous. Sometimes he would kneel,

hands cupped, sniffing a yucca flower out here in the old

country, breathing familiar landscapes.

 

His voice, honey sweet, trickles down into a whisper –

                                            Quien es, he asks, quien es.

 

These are his last words – the only ones he remembers, the only

words he says before he disappears. He waved at me from across

the field, hopped on his horse and rode.

 

I think he went south to Texas, looking for Charlie Bowdre

and the rest of the Gang.

 

I have been to the field since, and whispered his name along

the old dirt road, trying to find his ghost. 

 

Varanasi on the Ganges 

she rises from the mist,

emerges on ethereal legs,

 

old Gods press up against

her ancient sides,

 

a firefly –

ghost in the morning hour,

sucking forth the dawn

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Bradley McIlwain is a Canadian-based writer and poet, who lives and works in rural Ontario. His works have appeared in Wanderings Magazine, New Verse News, Rope and Wire, Frostwriting, The Copperfield Review, and others. He holds a Bachelor of Arts, Honours in English Literature from Trent University. His first collection of poetry was recently published and is available at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1472480.