Nulty Lynch is a husband, father, poet and fly-fisherman.  Not usually all at once, or in that order. He lives in Laurel, Maryland with his wife, two daughters and two dogs.  He's taking up watercolor, because he needs a new "thing" like a hole in the head.  He works in Washington D.C. and found.that the train commute goes much quicker while writing.  He has most recently been published in Shoots and Vines and Modern English Tanka, and will be published in upcoming issues of The Stray Branch, Yellow Mama and The Houston Literary Review.

Four Poems (August 20, 2009. Issue 8.)

Pueraria lobata (or: the vine that ate the South)

Her love creeps like kudzu.
Crawling, covering all it comes upon.
There is no malice, only constancy
in her devotion and affection.
Embracing all her love finds
and choking out weaker competitors,
stripped of their food and sun.

Her love creeps like kudzu.
Shoring up the weak points of my
coastline, preventing my soul erosion
with its stolons and taproots and
its incorruptible nature.

Her love creeps like kudzu.
Working its way where it wasn’t
planned for or expected.
Each time it seems dead, it comes
back, building on vines that were.
The old structures of my heart
are only distinguishable by silhouette,
now leafy and bigger than life.

Kamakura Daibutsu

After depositing 20 yen in the ancient
wooden box, looking for all the world
to have predated the arrival of the Black Ships,
I push through the slighter younger turnstile
sideways, ducking my head as I do.
In the dusty, bronze-scented air, the smell
of blood and not-blood, the stairs are barely
visible. Climbing the treads, one by one, widdershins,
always mindful of the ceiling, I reach the head
of the Great Buddha of Kamakura, and peer
out of his eyes, one by one, hoping to gain
his perspective, to see the world otherwise.

Quercus virginiana

Live oak growing next to the tracks.
There are no shipwrights for miles.
How long will it grow here,
waiting for the percussion of cannonade?
Breathing the diesel and steel dust,
anxious for the ax, saw and chisel
to bring it to aspiration in the framework,
in the heart, of a heavy frigate or fast clipper.
Watching progress rattle past on iron wheels.

Lonerica

Riot of green
approaches the tracks.
Unsure who has the right
of way, who is invasive.

Kudzu slapping at the
windows as we speed by.

Emergency Exit.
Pull Handle.
Remove Frame.

Flowering honeysuckle
reaches verdant fingers out
to invite us into her explosion.

Pull Stamen.
Touch to Tongue.
Taste Childhood