Waking. Ron Rash

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СКАЧАТЬ how I never once woke

      in a hall, on a porch step,

      but always outside, bare feet

      slick with dew-grass, the house

      deeper shadow, while above

      moon leaning its round shoulder

      to the white oak’s limbs, stars thrown

      skyward like fistfuls of jacks.

      Rising as if from water

      the way dark lightened, it all

      slow-returning, reluctant,

      as though while I’d been sleeping

      summoned away to attend

      matters other than a child’s

      need for a world to be in.

Woodshed in Watauga County

      Leaking in the one window,

      candle shallow, then deepened,

      caught-light gathered on gray planks

      like a bowl filling slowly,

      a simmer of late summer

      distilled to dull yellow glow,

      thickening air like honey

      as mud daubers and dust motes

      drifted above like moments

      unmoored from time, and the world

      and the sun aligned, grew still.

Junk Car in Snow

      No shade tree surgery could

      revive its engine, so rolled

      into the pasture, left stalled

      among cattle, soon rust-scabs

      breaking out on blue paint, tires

      sagging like leaky balloons,

      yet when snow came, magical,

      an Appalachian igloo

      I huddled inside, cracked glass

      my window as I watched snow

      smooth pasture as though a quilt

      for winter to rest upon,

      and how quiet it was—the creek

      muffled by ice, gray squirrels

      curled in leaf beds, the crows mute

      among stark lifts of branches,

      only the sound of my own

      white breath dimming the window.

Time Flow

      Green plush of bank moss, a smell

      like after rain, and the creek

      deepening behind the shed

      where Nolan White spent his time

      to wedge hours and seconds

      out of time, free them to spill

      out the open door as if

      another current flowing

      through the pool where I sank worms

      to raise watery rainbows.

      His one son had died, so now

      he worked alone, making clocks

      for Boone tourists. Once I laid

      down my tackle, stepped inside

      a moth-swirl of ticks and chimes,

      at the center lathed chestnut

      laid upon two sawhorses,

      what Nolan White bent over,

      hands dipping in, attentive

      as a surgeon as he set

      each gear in place. When it stirred

      he brought me close, let me hear

      that one pulse among many.

The Wallet

      Knee deep in the Watauga’s

      rock leaping whitewater,

      my brother loses his balance,

      his life if our father

      doesn’t flail downstream

      swimming air, running river,

      tripping on stones to collar

      his son, drag to a sandbar,

      confirm with tentative fingers

      his empty back pocket.

      We pace back and forth on the shoreline,

      down to the bridge, the other bank

      before the sun finally falls

      blurring the river in darkness,

      my father not saying, don’t worry,

      a life is priceless, not saying

      something like that, not tousling

      my brother’s hair and smiling.

      For this is October. My father

      believes he’ll be fired soon,

      will face winter’s cold coming

      without thirty-four washed-away dollars.

Myopia

      They belonged to the mother

      of my grandmother, removed

      the morning she died, each lens

      a clear coin, arms and rims

      tarnished СКАЧАТЬ