Thinned
Thin things:
lace in a shoe,
a noon appointment,
a poor-house robe,
a reed
and the road I still
hanker after.
Poems on the topic: road
Poems on the topic “road” on Poets.by.
Eaten by jingoes
On a road
of many lips,
the war
is every raw
expectation of
a poor Jack.
Deep Structure
day breaks
like a wishbone
how lucky
that the longer portion
remains with us
in darkness
under the interstate
in that dull
interminable thunder
a school of salmon-
colored leaves
stream down
from trees given
scraps of now-
worthless land
a cylindrical concrete pier
Hog Roast
whole hog
only half roasted
we ate it anyway
tearing off thin strips
the pink muscle
tissue dripped
fluids down
our chins
we savored the char
the crunchy skin
a young man
had just graduated
he imagined the future
as one does at 21
an open road
stretching before him
Saved by Death
forest downpour heard
first in the treetops
i picture a cinematic
rain of arrows
or maybe small frogs
like the two in the road earlier
one still moving
the other just bones and wasps
i took picture after picture
on my phone which now
rests like a joey
in a dry pocket
soon the gravel road
is two torrents
and i am a turtle hunched
under poncho and umbrella
The Hollow (35)
after failing
this year to blossom
Clintonia leaves
seedhead
the two sterile florets’
showy bracts
the mountain road’s
one straight stretch
turning to look back
headwater stream
a dark and slender
mink’s road
The Hollow (23)
spicebush fills
the opening the big birch left
that allspice scent
“heteromorphic
self-incompatibility”
partridgeberry’s red pills
END OF PUBLIC ACCESS
sun shining right through
the plastic sign
where the road crosses the creek
a crayfish
walking upstream
Up in the hollow
A small cloud on the cliff
above the railroad tracks—
the shadbush is in bloom.
As I drive up the hollow on
our one-lane road, a red-tailed hawk
passes me going down.
All the spring ephemerals are emerging,
leaves wrinkled and damp
like freshly pitched tents.
On the Way to Santiago, 1978
I remember the Moorkiller’s
stone horse in Logroño,
its terrible phallus.
Near the steps that pilgrims
once bloodied with their knees,
the jolly lacemaker.
We yield the road
to sheep, a bicycle race,
old men bowling in the afternoon.
Breaking through
Fresh holes gape in a maple trunk,
as if from some Roman
soldier’s lance.
The new, smooth ground of ice and sleet
hasn’t quite set;
I keep breaking through.
Cardinals peck at the plowed road,
gathering faux teeth
for their reliquaries.
Snow plow
Our neighbor plows
down-hollow and back,
his wife riding shotgun.
The old plow truck hasn’t left
the mountain in years,
bound to its one road.
In each yard,
it raises white ramparts
from the fallen enemy.
Winter Road
Asphalt
fades to white
from weeks of salt.
Ice stitches
jack-knifed feathers
in the ditch
beside
the gray ridge
the snowplow made.
Phragmites rocks
in the wake
of passing trucks.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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