Census
 

Small town evenings
of darkened leathermills
and glove shops.
The jackhammers are still.
Along the old train bed
boys gather at dusk
to throw gravel
at each other.  No backhoes
carve holes in vacant lots.
They rise coolly into the air— 
a cat in the weeds
may sniff gently
at a tiretread.
Along the shaded sidewalks
at midnight, a lone couple moves
arm in arm, neither old
nor young.
 
--originally published in Magic Shows.  Cleveland State, 1986.
 


The Mind Of A Small Town
 
 
Taillights of a sedan driven by habit
vanish over a hill as night begins
to infiltrate the gullies, ditches, and
hedges of this town where no one famous
has ever visited. A young woman
who is free all night to invent her life
imagines herself on television,
slimmer and smiling into the eyes
of an actor her mother met years back
in an elevator in Chicago.
If it seems that "the mind is its own place,"
even in this small town named for a large one
in another country, the mind is its
own place, rutted and washed out like spring roads,
criss-crossed with conflicting messages, like
a map with its overlapping claims.
The woman thinks suddenly of her brother,
out later than he should be, who just now
cups a firefly in one hand and won't show
anyone, not even himself, for fear
it will escape. He sees a floodlight on
a distant house as it buzzes, turns pink,
then gradually grows to blinding white.
What is not seen may not exist, he thinks,
and decides to ignore his sister's call
when it comes. She'll keep time to her own life.

--originally published in Magic Shows. Cleveland State, 1986.



Guided Tour Of Pocahontas, Virginia
 
 
 What can be learned on a one-day visit? 
 Chances are I'd look all day at rubbish, 
 thinking it profound, unless some native
 guided me into the stories of this town,
 a soggy, moss-grown hollow tucked among
 hills once rich with coal, now crossed with networks
 
of shafts and tunnels where dripping water
loosens what remains. I-beams, wooden posts
shore up rock more surely than the markets,
body shops, and houses of beauty
can resurrect days of full employment.
Was it three mines working then, and coal trains
 
stacked here to Pittsburgh? Was the company
a store too full for a boy to explore? 
Now boys toss footballs up and down the streets
as if to show that Thanksgiving supper
was no less, no more than they expected.
And twenty-five years of various schemes
 
toward prosperity have reduced themselves
to historic markers on the highway.
Was a fortune made here selling coffins?
The price was high. I know an outdoor fire
would sizzle in this gray-black rain—coal dust
everywhere, the creek slowly recovering
 
with bad times permanent. What can be known
without living here, eating cabbage rolls
in church basements, honing gossip like knives?
What can't memory say? The old train bed,
thick with briars, bottles, and rusted parts
of forgotten machines, sprawls across town
 
 like a paralyzed arm. At the graveyard
 on the hill, a splendid view of local
 stubbornness—six churches, two black, four white,
 all identical to these outside eyes,
 all ready to speak in tongues of great loss,
 even the Hungarian Catholics
 
 perched on the rock of their protested faith.
 The neighborhoods gather around each church
 with their identical, company homes
 that have outlived the company. Smoke rises
 here and there, easily misunderstood
 as rage. For there's no money anymore
 
 to keep up the cemetery, which rots,
 overgrown with honeysuckle, stones chipped
 and toppled, beer cans gathered in circles
 around piles of cigarette butts. One crypt,
 famous for its faulty top, in good light
 gives a view of unambiguous bones
 
 among the blown leaves and trashed dropped in.
 In a junkyard a green bus labelled "Christ"
 rusts beneath its crumpled roof. The spirit
 lives in every cinderblock coal shed, car
 overflowing a garage, and Beware
 Of Dog sign before a yard without dogs.
 
 —originally published in Second Wind. Texas Tech, 1990.



Not Exactly Surprised
 
 
No one was ever known
to get past the front stoop
at the Steen house—not even
Sam Handley, who could slide
his way into any other kitchen
for some coffee, making his
mild pitch for life insurance
almost seem like an afterthought.
But Schuyler and Marge Steen
kept all at bay. Boy Scouts
hawking pancake supper tickets
cooled their heels in the snow
while Marge hunted up her purse
and returned to the half-shut door.
Ken McGill, the Presbyterian minister,
made his entire once-a-year call
standing on the steps with Skye
until Skye would remark, "Well,
I won't keep you," and the door
would be latched before
the Reverend could round out
his final platitude.

Not that the Steens were
standoffish, or didn't pitch in— 
at church suppers there was Marge
stirring the soup pots, and Skye
always threw in an extra buck
or two for the high school car wash.
Most weekends, Skye tipped a few
alone at the Gaslight, and if pressed
about his home life would just say
something like "Too many
damn women in that house. . . ."
and change the subject to the ball game.

So nobody knew what they had
to hide in that trim brick home
behind tall hemlock hedges
without even a swingset in the yard
for their three quiet girls to play on;
and so it went until Skye
went plumb crazy in his 69th year
and locked Marge out, then
cruised Main Street at two a.m.
searching for her, honking
the car horn so much that the cops
finally had to haul him in.

Then Sam Handley spread it
around town how Skye
had been beating Marge for years,
and, adding insult to cliché, was
screwing his secretary
at a motel over in Glove City,
and, well, people were not exactly
surprised. Certain rumors
from decades past surfaced,
and neighbors nodded
with jaded wisdom or satisfied
shock, according to their lights.

It was all so easy to foresee,
they agreed. Marge put the house
up for sale and Skye went into a home
while she moved in with Karla,
their youngest. Nobody said
it was the madness of age
or even the terrible loneliness
after their eldest girl Brenda
died in that car wreck
in Buffalo. No, everyone
remembered how the house
of Marjorie and Schuyler Steen
had always been a fortress
of black whispers and fog.
No one was the least bit surprised.