“No poem ever bought a hamburger, or not too many.” – Thomas Lux, American poet, teacher, and author of “Split Horizon” and “Child Made of Sand,” who was born 10 December 1946. “The Road That Runs Beside The River” follows the river as it bends along the valley floor, going the way it must. Where water goes, so goes the road, if theres room (not in a ravine, gorge), the river on your right or left. Left is better: when youre driving, its over your elbow across the road. You see the current, which is what the river is: the river in the river, a thing sliding fast forward inside a thing sliding not so fast forward. Driving with, beside, the rivers flow is good. Another pleasure, driving against it: its the same river someone else will see somewhere else downstream -- same play, new theater, different set. Wide, shallow, fairly fast, roundy-stone streambed, rocky-land river, it turns there or here -- the ground telling it so -- draining dull mountains to the north, migrating, feeding a few hard-fleshed fish who live in it. One small sandbar splits the river, then it loops left, the road right, and the rivers silver slips under the trees, into the forest, and over the sharp perpendicular edge of the earth. “And Still It Comes” like a downhill brakes-burned freight train full of pig iron ingots, full of lead life-size statues of Richard Nixon, like an avalanche of smoke and black fog lashed by bent pins, the broken-off tips of switchblade knives, the dust of dried offal, remorseless, it comes, faster when you turn your back, faster when you turn to face it, like a fine rain, then colder showers, then downpour to razor sleet, then egg-size hail, fist-size, then jagged laser, shrapnel hail thudding and tearing like footsteps of drunk gods or fathers; it comes polite, loutish, assured, suave, breathing through its mouth (which is a hole eaten by a cave), it comes like an elephant annoyed, like a black mamba terrified, it slides down the valley, grease on grease, like fire eating birds’ nests, like fire melting the fuzz off a baby’s skull, still it comes: mute and gorging, never to cease, insatiable, gorging and mute. “A Little Tooth” Your baby grows a tooth, then two, and four, and five, then she wants some meat directly from the bone. Its all over: shell learn some words, shell fall in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet talker on his way to jail. And you, your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue nothing. You did, you loved, your feet are sore. Its dusk. Your daughters tall.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 13:42:35 +0000
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