Poems


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What We Do

Is it just dumb instinct, this fear
as the landscape bleaches out,
every foot of ascent

less familiar, the silver birch
more stunted, their leaves
a sickly yellow? Wildflowers,

creeping, white,
fog over the forest floor,
each petal frail as thread.

o

Like soap in the river
diffusing, to dim the light
that filters down,

the drama humans make
imposes itself everywhere--
it can't help itself.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Indian Pipes,
Devil's Paintbrush, Avenging Angel--

New World history is slapped
like name tags through the woods:
our old morality play.

Even the simple arrowhead
can't, for us,
be simply a leaf.

o

Left behind on a slab
square-edged as a bench,

a bar of soap grows dappled
in the shade of afternoon--

where workmen took their rest
a hundred and fifty years ago--

to lounge on what had made them
swear and strain, sweat
beading up in the woods.

Upriver

o

the bridge they built still plays its part.

Pieced together with no mortar,
rock presses on rock--

a perfect arch
split from the air.

(from Season We Can't Resist, WordTech Editions, 2007; first published by Adirondack Review.)