School Section Lake

The only thing I’ve written between college and now that was any damn good. Its old web site vanished, so putting it up here.

 

SCHOOL SECTION LAKE

Fearless in one way, terrified in most others

He points the nose of the car at the North Star

White lines zip by like Minute Rice

Heat on, window rolled down

Occasionally slapping himself in the face to keep alert

Gaylord, Grayling, Wolverine, Vanderbilt

Towns built by men who did great works

Hewing and hauling great logs for great endeavors

In a time before consquences were more than dimly understood

Floated down rivers to be subsumed into society

An unseen labor, like making sausage or sewing flags

Best not to think about cocooned by weak modernity

Trees trees trees mailbox trees trees trees dirt sidetrack trees

What was once logged over is now again impenetrable

Nature and 1929 teaming up to reclaim their dues

Fresh gravestones two miles from any lonely outpost home

History rolls past unceasing, but genealogy shudders and jerks

2009 on the road, 1972 on blocks in a front yard

Abandoned trailers: the second or third wave of northern failure

But at least up here you smell pine more than motor oil

He slows down, flicks the brights, squints at the street signs

Finds his turn and leaves the wider world behind

Grass growing in the middle of the “road,” tickling his muffler

Pin straight thanks to Herculean surveys that were overly optimistic

But eventually impassable to the new order

Trees closer, crickets louder, stars bright

But here is the white sign that says “White Sign”

And here is the nearly forgotten cottage on a nearly forgotten pond

And here are the ways and means to be a bit more yourself

Than these days of Apple and Amazon will usually allow

The cot creaks concernedly but holds

He sleeps with fire in his eyelids, like his ancestors did

And for an evening finds peace