Thursday, July 28, 2011

On The Way To

.... get supper vegetables from the farm stand, rolling past the mown hayfields ( it's been a good summer for hay, hot and dry), the green fields of corn and beans looking lush, even the fallow fields look productive. The girl at the stand said "We could use some rain." Then continues her texting.   


Out of the corner of a cornfield, a red shadow of a deer. A roan. Roaming. 


...get the weekly assortment of paper goods, cat food, and big big bag of coffee beans, passing through the nearby hamlet, the road twisting and snaking around Rush West Rush Road (try saying THAT five times fast, my mother would say) a large man on the deck of the Creekside Inn at 2:00 in the afternoon, arms heavy on the railing, shoulders raised, lower back leaning. 


 Atlas. Shrugging. 


...let the dogs out at 3 p.m., riding my bike up Ontario Street, when suddenly it hits me as I round the curve: that humid, green, leafy, vegetative  SMELL almost like rot or decay, the last days of July, the greenness of summer rising from the stagnant creek and enveloping everyone so that our skins (should by all accounts) be green too. 


Cruciform colorforms. 


...slip on my flip flops that are still half under the bed, glancing out at the scattering of small brown half-formed maple leaves on the grass below my window ( my room like a tree fort in the maples all summer) and I think the smallness and the yellowness make them look like scattered pennies on the grass. 


Common Cents. In Leaves We Trust.


...home, after grocery shopping, the two-lane country road slow and plodding with homebound traffic. Two burly men are examining a barbeque that looks like a 55 gallon drum turned sideways, testing its heft, striking  a deal. Further down the road, boats for sale, a camper. 


Bankrupt BBQ. 


...ten o'clock, sitting on the front porch with a citronella candle and lantern, reading, thinking you would be along soon. Conjuring you in my mind like a hologram, but then if I started talking to you? Burning the Rubicon between eccentric and Crazy Cat Lady with overdue library books. 


Silent Night.


Here's a poem, Dear Imaginary Reader. Because we're all on our way from something. And I planted sunflowers this year. Though I hope they are happy where they are. 



Where My Sunflower Wishes to Go    
L.S.Klatt
A goldsmith hammered a sunflower
out of recycled trinkets. It howled

because it was tasteless, because it was
brassy. It could not turn to the sun

like other heliotropes. So the sun
had pity on the yard ornament

& melted it down with ardor.
And the goldsmith soaked his hands

in the liquefaction, & they hardened.
In this condition, he discovered

a finch laying an egg in a trash can.
He could handle neither the bird

nor the egg with his welded fingers.
But the yolk beneath the blue enamel

of the sky made him happy. It cast
his silhouette on the sidewalk while bees

trampled it with mellifluous feet.
  

2 comments:

  1. "& melted it down with ardor"

    Shall I be so bold as to confess that this is the effect this word weaving of yours has upon my mind?

    Yes. Yes, I shall.

    Thank you for the journey. Your on the way to rings blessedly familiar, and enticingly other.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fire up the Rubicon! ^..^

    ReplyDelete