Currently
the Poet Laureate of Dedham, MA, Christopher Reilley is a long time
prepress tech, print geek and former self publisher, now a father and
poet.
He describes himself as a conglomeration of everything he has ever
done, seen, felt, caused, experienced, observed and survived.
He has held many jobs in his life, from working in restaurants for
over twenty years - both in front and in back of the house - to being
a freelance illustrator and designer, a print expert, a computer help
technician, a door to door salesman, an on-air television face,
producer, sign maker, delivery truck driver, stand up comic, and donut
maker, but his favorite job is being a father to his two lovely
daughters and his son.
He is fiscally conservative and socially liberal, a collector of both
masks and comic books, and has recently returned to painting as a
serious endeavor. He does all the cooking in his house, has acted in
community and regional theater, and knows all the words to "If I Only
Had a Brain". And yes, it is true, he did graduate from clown college
in 1987.
Once upon a time, Christopher developed the Book in Time
print-on-demand work flow for Xerox, which eventually became the
default system for Bertelsmann, the largest book printer in the world.
He is currently preparing a full length manuscript of love and passion
poems for publication next spring, entitled "Slippery Friction".
Christopher
Reilley can
be found on his own Facebook page Poetry
of Reilly, or
fronting the Facebook page of the Dedham
Poet Society.
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FORMAL ABSENCE OF PRECIOUS THINGS
Though
drowned for three decades
she
steps fresh as creation
from
the broken glass doors.
And
then I remember, in that instant
that
she is dead, and I am not,
this
is another century, so
this
must be another girl,
a
newly minted stranger,
one
with whom I will never speak.
I
am awash in emotion -
not
loss exactly,
but
a very particular awareness
of
my own duration.
I
see a beggar leaning against
a
jewlery store facade,
his
head pressed against the windows.
In
those windows are small, empty pedestals,
formal
absences of precious things
now
locked away for the night.
His
legs wrapped in brown paper
look
vaguely medieval,
a
knight crafted from office materials.
He
is the color of pavement,
his
very race in question,
yet
when he looks up at me
my
own eyes peer out from his tangle of curls.
The
girl who drowned so very long ago
settles
down to my mind’s bottom,
swept
down in a swirl of toffee hair
and
less hurtful memories
to
where my youth turns gently
in
its accustomed tides,
and
I am more comfortable that way.
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