-cruising with the Meckelburgs-

Consider the natural stones,
Those laying in place on the dirt or the stiff-
Pale grass of the meadow;
Those collected and stored
At the side of the house where the angle
Of the cellar's entry shuts them off;
The natural stones they carry around
With two hands, laying them out again in some
Sort of order; those rock-picked in places
At the edges to fit the layers of the rising wall,
Like the one

Running between the weed-populated meadow

And the farmland acres on Russells Mills Road.

Here, milk cows dot the land behind the wire fences
Not far from their barns,

Coming to the fences to get a closer look,

And if you stand at ease and let them come to you,
They will.  Then,

One of them will sneeze through its nostrils

And soak you in mucus.

The stone wall is across the road from that.

It’s been there for fifty some odd years according

To Mrs. Meckelburg, who’s guessing, I think,

And its rocks are structured for activeness.

It stands about four feet;

The sides picket sharply in many directions

And the shelf pickets in the jagged

Circumference of its top-stones the same way.
I don’t know if the farmer, I’m assuming,

Did the best he could, or if its architecture

Was planned to be this way.

Less than a mile down Russell’s Mills,

Heading to where the cows get milked automatically
Under the guardianship of Hood Dairy,

By machines behind glass enclosures for public viewing,

Or public humiliation,—

Another natural stone wall is built and stands

On farmland separating it from some other sort of property.

From my vantage-point, this wall is sculpted

And pressed inside its design parameters. Each stone
Seems to have been carefully scrutinized for the benefit
Of the wall's common attitude. It looks impossibly planed.

Consider ingenuity and quiet spectacle here.

Crossing Russells Mills Road,
Consider the milk cows gathered there
As formal and distant.

At the fence, come the long faces forward;
The head's emptiness approaching;
The nasal sneezing forthcoming.
Consider the same

Soaking mucus, glazing.

                                  South Dartmouth, Mass.

                                          

  

...then this happened

Deeply into southeast Ohio
Step down to Kentucky
His father, married his mother

who gave birth to him.

They made the necessary adjustments.

His mother thought it strange that his father

would read passages of “How To Talk Dirty
and Influence People” every couple of days.

But what was there to do?

His father’s shirts were saturated with paint-

fine aluminum, working the second trick
producing slurry at the dynamite factory. 

If his mother knew better, the toss of an Ohio Blue-Tip

and his father’s an oxidizer of flame.

His mother, a dedicated educator of children
wouldn’t stop grade-school teaching
if the world was ablaze.
Same if it’s Hubby.

The clapboard house was standing
over long abandoned coal mines, echoing
the cries of the firedamp dead.

His parents saw little of one another day to day.

But in the morning, his father saw the wrap
of his fist around the playpen’s fence

as he rose to his feet for the first time.
Substantiated are those who have seen.

The child rises for the first time.

His father had no one to tell at the moment

So he kept his mouth shut about it.


                                 1976 / 2012