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.

Photographing the Hops Field

Stranded ankle-deep in snow,

the tall poles of the hops field

sketch runes on the winter sky.

Wind across the river bottom

aches with lonely ghosts exhumed

from brown and dog-eared histories.

Trying to snap a photo, I’m caught

in the breath of invisible worlds.

You hide your smile in the car

while I brace myself on absence,

my tough Norwegian sweater

armoring my vitals but leaving

my intellect exposed. The river,

sulking just beyond the field,

clings to its identity despite

the chill blown down from Canada.

The hills beyond look tired

of being hills, but lack volition.

In summer the hops grow

twenty-five feet up these poles.

They love the aerated valley soil,

rich and iron-red. Their bines

get plenty of support from rope

or wires, their ripe cones filling

with powdery gold lupulin.

You don’t care about the fine points

of growing hops and brewing beer

but prefer to face the low orange sun

and embrace its tender lessons.

The wind flicks little gouts of snow

dancing across the rutted slick.

As I take my photo I glimpse,

in the whorl of my bad eye,

a bit of ghost-green lingering—

an overlap of dimensions

that defines us despite ourselves.

Wapack Down

After I’ve walked up the auto road

the descent from Pack Monadnock

on the blue-blazed Wapack Trail

almost defeats me. Boulders

and scree, ledge and a trail marked

so poorly I almost tumble

down a hundred-foot gap in the sky.

Ice patches foster bone breaks,

while harsh November sunlight

casts shadows deeper than the eye

in its naked glory can plumb.

My skeleton revolts in its bag

of flesh. Muscles knot and suffer

a lack of elasticity.

The slope feels impractical,

as though the entire mountain

might sluice down to the highway

in a heap of gray apologies.

I don’t remember this trail

feeling so difficult underfoot,

but I haven’t plied it for years.

The last grave stretch of cliff-walking

confuses me so badly I lose

the string of blue blazes and doubt

I can bushwhack so grim a stretch

of bare and almost vertical ledge.

I retrace my steps and recover

the marked trail and stumble down

the last quarter-mile to the road

just as the sun retracts its favors

and allows a sheet of whispers

to slip over the leafless woods.

Tomorrow I’ll try ascending

this slab of primal geometry

by the same steep blue-blazed route.      

Then maybe I’ll recover myself

somewhere along the trail

where I left my youthful ego

cursing the icy rock and claiming

dominion it doesn’t deserve.