Hobble Creek Review
| William Doreski |
The Fire Pond Behind the Lumber Yard
On a raft on the fire pond
behind the lumber yard, Red
and I bake in August glare
while trying to nab the frogs
popeyed and smirking near shore.
Men wheeling forklifts spear palettes
and hoist them into the kiln
where the lumber will cure a month
before massive saw-wheels shape it
into reels for cable and wire.
The men ignore us. If we drown
they’ll shrug and maybe hoist
a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon
in memory of somebody’s kids.
The heat seems impersonal
today, slicking Red’s bold hair
like tarnish on brass. I envy
his coarse and ruffled carrot-top
but he’ll go bald by thirty
while I’ll turn gray but stay thatched.
And when I’m sixty I’ll visit
the pond, still misting with light;
and because we failed to drown in it
the frogs will greet me with jeers
in a dozen shades of green.
Sunapee Dark
Hard rain crests on the highway.
Unlit towns witness our transit,
but don't react. Constables doze
in idling patrol cars, their coffee
lukewarm in covered plastic cups.
The rain means nothing to the lakes
sprawled like carcasses, their weight
appalling and limp and so deeply
cold that the faintest touch is fatal.
By now the friends we visited
have crept to bed, stoked woodstove
ticking in the parlor, TV
cooling in its maple cabinet.
They don't understand the distance
fractioned by invisible landmarks
and have trouble counting the miles
mapped between themselves and the world.
The highway sizzles with chop,
the windblown rain authoritative
as fossils rippled in shale.
If we parked and began to walk
we'd soon fill up with midnight
and find our feet too heavy to lift.
No house displays a light, no one
acknowledges the planet still
gasping on its axis. But our shared
life of dreams, like magnetic poles,
requires that we acknowledge
the force-fields brazen about us—
the oblique deviances, the slant
of the rain, the roughened texture
of the landscape fathering itself
by appealing to the empathy
congealed in the back of the skull.
On a raft on the fire pond
behind the lumber yard, Red
and I bake in August glare
while trying to nab the frogs
popeyed and smirking near shore.
Men wheeling forklifts spear palettes
and hoist them into the kiln
where the lumber will cure a month
before massive saw-wheels shape it
into reels for cable and wire.
The men ignore us. If we drown
they’ll shrug and maybe hoist
a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon
in memory of somebody’s kids.
The heat seems impersonal
today, slicking Red’s bold hair
like tarnish on brass. I envy
his coarse and ruffled carrot-top
but he’ll go bald by thirty
while I’ll turn gray but stay thatched.
And when I’m sixty I’ll visit
the pond, still misting with light;
and because we failed to drown in it
the frogs will greet me with jeers
in a dozen shades of green.
Sunapee Dark
Hard rain crests on the highway.
Unlit towns witness our transit,
but don't react. Constables doze
in idling patrol cars, their coffee
lukewarm in covered plastic cups.
The rain means nothing to the lakes
sprawled like carcasses, their weight
appalling and limp and so deeply
cold that the faintest touch is fatal.
By now the friends we visited
have crept to bed, stoked woodstove
ticking in the parlor, TV
cooling in its maple cabinet.
They don't understand the distance
fractioned by invisible landmarks
and have trouble counting the miles
mapped between themselves and the world.
The highway sizzles with chop,
the windblown rain authoritative
as fossils rippled in shale.
If we parked and began to walk
we'd soon fill up with midnight
and find our feet too heavy to lift.
No house displays a light, no one
acknowledges the planet still
gasping on its axis. But our shared
life of dreams, like magnetic poles,
requires that we acknowledge
the force-fields brazen about us—
the oblique deviances, the slant
of the rain, the roughened texture
of the landscape fathering itself
by appealing to the empathy
congealed in the back of the skull.
William Doreski’s most recent collection of poetry is Another Ice Age
(2007). He has published three critical studies, including Robert
Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared
in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review,
The Alembic, New England Quarterly, and Harvard Review,
(2007). He has published three critical studies, including Robert
Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared
in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review,
The Alembic, New England Quarterly, and Harvard Review,
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