WISH I COULD REGARD THE NOBLE Sabbath; wish the work
would look at me [&] call me
good; of all the poetry in existence, wish I could
write the rest; flashlight the repose; yet freely crossed
by beams of half-moon [&] corn
in their crinoline rows; by the open thunder [&] the glowing doe; in
the pageant meadow, thing calls to me [&] thing I call to; crossed by
hazelnuts in orange space [&] the main thing is, PLACE AND PEOPLE IN IT
ARE THE ELEMENTS OF HISTORY, but hauling apples in a truck bed
from October to October is eternity; it rings
upon the face of the quarried, the farmed, the fished, the
WADING OUT OVER IT [&] being among its teasel [&]
then I saw, I’ve got to be a generator, not
a generation; just as gold motors up
into the goldenrod, crashes upon
the surface of the meadow. There’s got to be a point
of interest besides WHO BEGOT [&] THE DREAD OF
OBLITERATION; besides babies vs. floods; but yeah, what else
can I wish for; wish you could smell what a thousand turnips smell;
in this part of the life I’m chopping wood; I’m scraping clay
from my boots while everyone talks of nighttime
temperatures because the fairer roots
cannot survive another frost.
LIKE MOST AMERICANS, IT’S KIND OF HARD to explain
what I’m doing here [&] so, I trudged around
the alleys at sunset; windy snow [&] serious snowlit ridges; men out
with their personal snow machines. At the post office boxes, friendliness
outdoes most of us; sort of; I’ll gladly talk of drywall for a little
while, but when the presidents are being
elected it can get pretty low. At times I am ordained
by the gold we are gathered up within I swim with the widow smoking
tobacco by the pound [&] spent two years tatting a 7 x 5 foot truly gigantic
Lord’s Prayer; she called me over on Election Day [&] whispered, I went
for Biden, but THE MAIN THING IS, THE FRIENDLINESS IS
THE LAND; the snowlit ridges beyond [&] being far
with us; after us; the pink sky belongs to them
it is their sunset; they are a fundament; gender-
neutral odalisques [&] dirt roads; where elder grows; there is
a WE [&] a political enemy
smiled at me in the bank [&] I would not deign to comprehend my
place; whether it’s an elaborate substance or a simple substance [&] until
recently I didn’t know that all the fallow [&] the mountain land
is owned, every last bit; I thought there was just so much wild
land lying around [&] you just don’t know until someone
starts logging it.
WISH I KNEW WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE NAKED like herbs
beneath the lights in the sky, right in the middle of things driving around
knowing things for seasons [&] for signs; a philanthropist at lunch said
surely the deer would have come up with Sam’s Club, they aren’t
saints [&] god was like, man, now I gotta make you clothes;
then once dressed we got into plows [&] swords; my teacher
sighed [&] said, but do you really want to live
like a rabbit, eating [&] shitting? But yeah, there is the incredible
history of textile arts [&] but then there are the piles of discarded clothing
visible from outer space [&] the animals who live in mists of friendliness even
supping on the entrails of another [&] I cannot tell if good [&] evil were
there already, like peas, it’s just we hadn’t noticed them, but once
we did God put a sword flaming [&]
turning at the gate to keep us out because my old
friend Ralph told me sometimes after you get animals
out of a burning building, they run back in.
BUT YEAH, YOU KNOW, THE DEATH OF THE MOTHER, the rise
of the dictators; these things occur
on limestone, home stone, where there used to be so many summer
thunderstorms in summer [&] speaking of the deities, electricity [&]
water, you know, you, you—the electric
[&] water, you? AND THEN IT WAS DAN before me
who used to wash dishes where I worked; it’s him
who’s English, denoting not Amish, of the six-man roofing crew [&] so
he’s the driver of the big blue $60,000 truck [&] working side by side
from 7 to 5, DO THEY HAVE MORE IN COMMON AS MEN
who can bang out a roof in three days than ‘English’ Dan has with
‘English’ me? Probably; I
could have been a pastor, yelling
about electricity [&] water; I look at the moon
in the mined meadow; I remember it was my dad who said to me
when I was about sixteen, We really don’t know what 90 percent
of matter is; at that point he was paralyzed; [&] I can
hear the stone crusher now, Dear Lady [&] there is a rumor that
in those years my mom pretended to forget to mail
his mail-in ballots for Bush.
I’VE NOT BEEN GIVEN SIGHT OF PEOPLE SNEAKING around
in new forms after death; I haven’t seen my dead
come back to me as birds or foxes, baby gods, or holes in clouds—
like at art camp when I said wow, what does this look like? [&]
someone said, a beach [&] the young artist said, it is a beach, that’s
why it looks like a beach—I’ve seen just one fast round tatter
where the death bursts through on its way out [&] out
into the sun; a move for which I felt we were
rehearsing up in the high farm fields yesterday
where we were getting sluiced by the Seven Mountains
bouncing away in the south [&] by Harter Mountain’s blue razor
in the north [&] so as I was saying, the bouncing [&] the laying
formed a funnel, wide where we stood [&] narrow in the west it
emptied us towards the setting sun [&] not just us, but the choppy
lakes of goldenrod, too; the crooked milkweed [&] muzzles of mullein;
the rod and the fluff; all being dumped into the sun
setting over Egg Hill [&] what happened on the other side of that
gold hole receiving such a river of seed; was it luckier, and different
from what anyone supposed? Perhaps a vacuum
cleaner only angels could empty? Which we could almost see because
geologists call this part of the ridge [&] valley region the Pennsylvania
Climax, which makes these fields the climax of the climax, because they’re so
symbolic of what’s already
so symbolic.
IT’S SCARY TO KNOCK A DOOR IN NOVEMBER. Who is there [&] who
will answer. Petals on a dim lane, our faces float
towards each other. On a long lane I make it past the dogs; like beaten dogs
we eat from the stranger’s hand; I heard a writer say to have a baby
is to welcome a stranger, but that’s not true. The stranger is Myron
walking back [&] forth on Route 45 who’s hard to pick up
because he smells; though my friend Marcia always did; she remembered
his mother [&] what she was addicted to
while the stranger grew. No matter who’d been maimed or killed she always bid
at the big auctions to pay off hospital bills; she knew the secret of not liking
people; it’s a folk art; like folksy Corey in his muddy moon
boots walking a long lane of ag plastic slow into the pink
December almanac; into the sunset with the dribbler
pricking holes; like an 11th-century peasant who doesn’t vote
for the food stamps he gets his kids [&] then we push a thousand
cloves of garlic down into the holes with our thumbs.
from The Village Elegies
Abby Minor
