POETRY BY GARY ROBBE

Gary Robbe is an educator and writer currently living in Colorado. He has had numerous stories published in ezines, magazines, anthologies and podcasts. His debut collection of short stories, Not Buried Deep Enough, was published in October 2023. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and a founding member of the Denver Horror Collective. He is also an associate editor with Bewildering Stories.

GRAVES THAT DISAPPEAR

Dust, unsettled by a graying moon in a dying sky,
sweeps past headstones and silent markers lost
in cemeteries long past, while
twisted grass and gnarled weeds claim the frost
in a fragment of the night’s guile.
Brushing waves of cold shadow aside
I move silently and watchfully over the dead, grinning
down to graves long disappeared, long forgotten.

Too many cemeteries hide in wooded hills,
far from the memories of unused roads and paths.
I chose this home for you, this secluded place,
where vacancy permits beneath the lonely brittle grass
and neighbors long devoured by worms’ embrace.
This tree, that tree, silhouetted in fragile moonlight,
may be the spot where the earth called to me,
and called for you to join it.

A sour wind rattles what brittle leaves are left,
and carries with it distant thoughts from an obscured past.
I dug you deep and naked you lay, so many years ago
interred in quiet solitude the hurt as well at last
I drop a rose, a dead one, upon the place I know,
to show my love my forgiveness will forever grow
and wandering back on anonymous graves, I grin.
I like graves that disappear.

ALL THE MISSING THINGS

It is rotting laughter
outside in the gathering dark
that brings her to the upstairs window. The woods
pressing against the tiny yard
as she presses against the cool glass
trying to trace the missed sounds,
while broken pieces of moon rise
silent.

This is the time, the empty spaces
between light and dark
that draw the shadow shelled woman
to drink in all those parts ripped away
and buried not so deep enough
in soft earth beneath the wandering oak
anchored forever and missed,
in chains that reach her heart.

Laughter faint and wind-decayed, the twins
play with the swing on the old oak,
Jon twists and twists the rope,
Jess spins in the release, and the tired woman leans
against the window looking, listening
to the unworldly laughter
falling with the leaves in the breeze.
The twins’ long blonde hair ablaze in the dying light.

Her fingers follow images on glass,
her children once and forever, and
she presses harder,
wanting to be with them there in the yard.
Jess screams in delight round and round
while Jon looks to the empty window, eyeless,
melted features more blackened bone than flesh.
He grins.

The woman scratches at the window.
How she missed the laughter.
How she missed the enigmatic grin.  

IN THE DEPARTED VILLAGES

In the departed villages
a cold wind scratches
through empty buildings
empty spaces, all
the holes we’ve become.
In the departed villages
atop the Dartmoor valleys
Islington, Hound Tor,
Wildcombe in the Moor
from dark to darker
daemon shades are drawn
to wander
open dead lanes and dim corners
chanting Dies Irae,
hymns that cannot be heard, only felt
against sunken shouldered houses
crumbled barns and stables
warehouses and workshops
and hollow-eyed churches
once centers of life
now exhausted
centers of death.
The villages in tides of sleep
where no dreams disturb
the darkness within the darkness
the hunger within the hungered
mists and the will o’ the wisp,
lay awake with unseeing eyes
and uneasy dread.
In the departed villages
the magna pestilencia danced
o’er blue shadowed graves
empty and longing
beneath burned skies
and now as then
things move in psychic grooves
unaware of an outside world
unaware of their ritual dance.
In a departed village graveyard
atop a moss-covered wall
a phantom raven dances
and makes a rasping call.
In long departed villages
no one hears its plaintive warning
against the drifting wind,
in long departed villages,
the dead are trapped within.