The River in Winter

The river in winter looks a mile wide and an inch deep. No ice on it. Clapboard and battenboard structures lean toward the corrugated silver flux, but none are about to fall in. I’ve crossed this stone-arch bridge many times on foot, slinking from the college to the coffee shop where a famous poet clutched his notebook and passed out with a sigh. Trying to revive him, I inadvertently inhaled his breath and saw huge worms devouring the cosmos. He revived, but I didn’t. And now those worms have strangled my heart so I can’t love the landscapes I used to love.

The river groans over pebbles, sacrificing itself for the sake of gravity. That famous poet has gone back to Pennsylvania where we’re all going to die. I wish I were in Philadelphia in a sleazy bar sipping a pint of decent ale. Maybe the streets there aren’t as slick as in this cubic little college town. Maybe the crimes of the cosmos don’t involve huge greasy worms that sneak through open pores to strangle one’s favorite organs. The cosmos isn’t inside me, but I ‘m digesting it anyway, the worms writhing and my stomach churning the way the river churns over dams and waterfalls before smelting itself in the sea.

Edmund’s Hardware

Outside the hardware store,

the display of stepladders

in red, green, yellow fiberglass,

blue and black plastic trash barrels,

and heavy steel wheelbarrows

absorbs the weather with a smile.

You want the tallest ladder to reach

the daylight moon simmering

in a marbled old-fashioned sky.

You’d hang a Christmas wreath

complete with blood-red ribbon

from a snag of creamy moon-rock

and wrap silver ropes of tinsel

right around the dark side.

I’m more eager to test-drive

the snow shovels leaning against

the rail of the wheelchair ramp.

Not enough snow to challenge

the larger scoops, though. Standing

in the dry cold while traffic

stammers along the highway,

we let the old-fashioned aura

of hardware soften us up

before we enter the store to shop

for a jagged set of drill-bits

and a handsaw cruel as the famous

serpent’s tooth. Ingratitude

doesn’t apply, though. We’re glad

this store thrives with products

so tactile, compact, and utile

that they affirm human aspects

distance like the moon’s denies.

This Black and White Scene

Although the brook’s ankle-deep,

the hole in the ice looks bottomless.

Black as cast iron, it tempts me

to lean so far over I’ll fall

into the center of the earth.

You agree that an abstraction

has formed, maybe by Arthur Dove

or Clyfford Still. You note

that it’s “eerie but beautiful,”

and represents nothing in nature.

So we’re in nature but this brook,

flowing from the Peterborough Hills

to the Contoocook River, warps

from one world to another.

No wonder the painters I loved

in my youth went insane and ate

paint-squiggles straight from the tube.

No wonder museums prevent

visitors from touching the canvas.

Touching this black and white scene

would plunge me into constructions

of Anthropocene horror ripe

as the moment before a scream.

You note that I’ve carelessly rhymed,

that my seams are showing again,

but I need that stark crude emphasis

to cut through temptation and stop

me from dropping into that hole                                        

and in one world breaking my neck

on the shallow rocky bottom

and in another world emerging

on the dark side of the moon.