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.
NANMYKEL.COM 
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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