Middle-aged bleached me
in a used yellow Gremlin
heading up Route 7
on Woden’s Day,
slow truck in font,
burdened, toting
sixteen logs that slip
toward the front, inside
their iron chains,
sixteen logs from the forest,
leaving 16 stumps behind.
At 8:20 a.m. on
May 5, nineteen eighty-two, in
Appalachia, decade
of Brooke Shields,
Century of Ann Frank,
millenium of St. Joan,
a mud-spattered Ohio
license hangs beneath
rough-cut faces
of former trees,
somewhere, pressed
between yesterday and
tomorrow on the long
journey to the mill.
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About Nan Mykel
I used to think I would be a child prodigy, but then I got old. Formerly I had fantasies of rubbing elbows with cultural and academic leaders but that did not come to pass because I did not become a cultural or academic leader or any other kind of leader, for that matter. I am not even an "Alpha Dog," a term learned from a friend who had to become "Alpha Dog" in order to influence her own pet. (When gazes lock, she never looks away.)
For years I expected to become a published author, but in passing I could not avoid the fact that I had little to contribute to the world's bulging dumpsters. I'm embarrassed to report that I also considered my primary process artistic productions powerful, rather than mildly neurotic.
Which is not to say that I disrespect myself, only that I am beginning to doubt my potential for making a mark on the world. If I focus on strict self discipline I may be able to keep my garbage removed on a weekly basis, to keep the kitty box changed, the clothes cleaned, the dog watered, fed and walked, but that just catches me up to the starting mark again.
When writing I physically grapple with words, wrestling them from their indifference into attempted chunks of awareness. I sit heavily on my chair; I breathe in artificially cooled air; my ear drums note the tap tap of the keyboard and the steady uninterrupted sound of the air conditioner, What is that sound? The roar of the ocean from 30 yards away...Inside, my thoughts are are balls in an electronic game machine, bouncing hither and yon from lever to lever.
I am a little grim and intent until I recall a dream related by a black man in the prison where I once worked. He said that when he was a small boy, back home, he dreamed he was standing on his front porch pissing, and that he suddenly found himself pissing stars...
I’m with you, Nan, ‘heading up Route 7’! Your poem is cinematic, like an old movie they show on television in the afternoons. Great use of verbs in ‘burdened’ and ‘toting’ and you’ve really conveyed the movement of the ‘sixteen logs that slip’. And I love those final lines, like a close-up of the mud-spattered Ohio license… pressed between yesterday and tomorrow’.
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Thanks so much. I didn’t see the prompt until too late.
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I know you must have been worried about those logs slipping, especially driving in a Gremlin. Fortunately you were driving with a caseload of powerful verbs, that kept them in place, lol. Love the descriptive narrative of your form.
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So you know Gremlins, eh? During the last 2 months I drove it I had to crawl in and out of the drivers’ side window! Thanks for the response.
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😀
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A beautiful poem Nan!
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(I got my days mixed up) Thanks
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Nice measurements of time with hour and minute, decade, century and millenium all observed from one’s own “middle age” starting off the poem.
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This is quite wonderful! I especially love how you’ve delineated the time here….and described the plight of these logs on their long final journey to the mill. Well done. Can also be read metaphorically….at least for me. 🙂
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Thanks, Lillian. At least the blogs chain us together…for now.
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Love the imagery in this. Especially: a mud-spattered Ohio license hangs beneath rough-cut faces of former trees. Nice write!
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Thank you! I didn’t have to scratch too deep for what was before my eyes!
: D
Nan
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lovely tale. My husband has always been a driver and we have had some strange accidents…like the logs..and all the worry and chaos that comes with these things. A good story and lovely descriptions. XX
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Thanks for your feedback and sharing, Allison! (My mother an sister’s name).
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