‘Living Dead’: A Poem by James A. Tweedie

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Living Dead

The riffled rush of water mingles with
The wind among the Ponderosa pines
As damp chill of late summer mountain rain
Soaks through my shirt and clings and binds it to
My skin as if I were a mummy wrapped
In strips of liquid linen, parody
Of Karloff’s walking dead, where echoes of
The screams of frightened audiences now
Reverberate in silence, sealed in cans
Of decaying acetate piled high on some
Forgotten shelf in Hollywood—in air-
Conditioned archives housed in buildings built
To serve as modern pyramids in which
The visual remains of movie stars
Are laid to rest, entombed, embalmed, preserved,
As revered idols of the Silver Screen.
I walk beside a Cascade river called
Metolius where native Red Band trout
Are hunted with a barbless hook, each fish
A trophy, caught (if caught at all), released
To swim another day and to be caught
Again, again, again, a Groundhog Day
Where fishy life and death are time-looped for
Eternity except for now, today,
When I with pole in hand, both soaked and skunked,
Cannot, apart from outright lying, say,
“You should have seen the one that got away.”

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James A. Tweedie is a retired pastor living in Long Beach, Washington. He has written and published six novels, one collection of short stories, and four collections of poetry including Sidekicks, Mostly Sonnets, and Laughing Matters, all with Dunecrest Press. His poems have been published nationally and internationally in both print and online media. He was honored with being chosen as the winner of the 2021 SCP International Poetry Competition.