The Watch and Two Other Poems By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Thomas L. Vaultonburg is a poet, haikuist, editor, and publisher from Rockford, Illinois. He is the founder of Zombie Logic Press and editor of Zombie Logic Review, and co-founded Wolf Twin Books with poet and artist Tré. His books include Vanished Roads (2026), Small Songs for Weary Travelers (2023), Moonscape: Haiku Phase I (with Tré, 2022), Submerged Structure (2012), Flesh Wounds (2011), and Concave Buddha (1991). His poetry and haiku have appeared in journals including Presence, Acorn, Wales Haiku Journal, Kokako, and elsewhere. His recent work increasingly combines poetry with visual art, walking, ecology, and the landscape of northern Illinois, including the six-year Hike You! project and the forthcoming Prairie Zen. He lives and writes in Rockford.

Poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg

The Watch

For most of my life I have lived feeling another Watcher had gone derelict and left me with a longer portion of the night than was my duty.

At first I longed for this entity to return, if only for the companionship. 

Later I became agitated and resentful that I was left with more than my own share of the task.

Many times I became confused in the darkness and wished they would return and explain my duties to me and how best to perform them in the absence of any instruction.

I learned to humor myself, often portraying the role of both myself and the absent Watcher, in the process mimicking the words I believed would pass between such a mentor and a callow student.

In time I made peace with the succeeding generations of nocturnal creatures that incarnated life after life in my purview. I became merely another inanimate thing in their periphery.

I became old on my watch and now believe a Watcher will soon arrive, but not the one I waited so long for. This one will come to stand here in this place and await instructions from me.

I will have nothing to say. 

Discourses In Poetics

"How does one become

A poet?" the Master asked.

"By ignoring the stream's babbling

And the willow's mumbles?"

The Acolyte replied

"No!"

Answered the Master 

Who was a stream,

"By paying no attention to 

The wind's folly" 

But the newly minted poet

Was already chasing the moon 

Across a drunken horizon

"Shall the poet speak

Of suffering/"

Asked the second Acolyte

To the Master at

His opium pipe

"How do I capture

The poem?" asked

The third Acolyte

"Like packing the bag

of an unwelcome guest"

The Master rejoined

"But I'm not going anywhere"

Said the Acolyte

The Master frowned

"What is the purpose of the Poet?"

Asked the final Acolyte

"Silence.

I am attempting to access

Your bank account"

Said the Master.

The Old Hermit Speaks of Poetry

When my poems escaped me

Like ducks from a broken pen,

I did not chase them like the

Young poets from the village.

Instead, I finished my bottle of wine,

And wandered the hills drunken

And free from care,

Where I discovered my poems

Hiding in the rocks and trees,

And a brook singing a song

About a foolish old poet

Looking for his lost poems.