Another Creature: Poems

Junction

Junction This morning, driving south from home, you saw the land still waiting, hills of it piled up around the barns in weary winter-rusted golds. The road unwound to print the circling redtail, splayed-out clouds, fallen hulls of crib-caged corn, a sudden dark roundness of tree trunks against flat sky. What is it that you want now, you asked yourself. A willow leans her yellow leaves just inches from the surface of the water. Whole eras pass by like road signs, flash metallic, netted fish. Slow curve, detour, right turn does not stop. No breakdown lane, no now-or-never junction. Meanwhile in this same sky, the great hinged bellies of warplanes swing open and the headmistress counts her children. And Icarus falls and falls through every painting, all of our lives in line like these little white crosses along the road. What you want now: a county road that snakes its crooked way up grey half-hills, down the long rusty slopes, finds clusters of cows and herds of deer at dusk, 83 blue chicory in ditches, green corn, and the deep hush of amber before stars. And you want them the way you once wanted a drink, another drink, a cigarette. The way you once wanted his love, or his love, or his. But more. More. 84 ...