North
by Gregory Lawless
Gregory Lawless
Gregory Lawless is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Ampersand, Apple Valley Review, "Best of the Net 2007," Blood Orange Review, Contrary, The Cortland Review, Drunken Boat, Front Porch Journal, Gander Press Review, H_NGM_N, La Petite Zine, Memorious, My Name Is Mud, nth position, Sonora Review, Stride, and 2River. BlazeVOX will publish his collection of poems, I Thought I Was New Here, in 2009. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.
(After C.K. Williams)
One yellow helmeted tree-trimmer, his chainsaw idling now,
twists down to the ground in his swiveling boom, the sound
of the tree shredder rasping still through maple and beech branches, spitting
chips and leaf dust into black bags on the grass. Two men drag
one stricken limb across the lawn
and lift it up to the turning saws of the shredder when
I look away at the dumplands beyond the highway and the river, at the high
coiled sweeps of barbed-wire and the vent pipes pouring
their cursed air into the air. The Albany trailers thunder over
the rumble strips on the shoulder, as jackhammers
bite into asphalt between blasts
of hosewater. The cops wave everyone around and away up 81
and so I grind my car now toward their hands
and sputtering rollers. I have, so many times, driven north
to the state border just to remember
how to flee, how the hot tires bubble over potholes, past blasted
rock and parched trees. This time, I think, I'll stay gone long
enough to lose a job and break down in some factory town
on the upper Hudson; I break down of course
but I keep driving. I drive off without leaving and later
I come home past patches of crosses
and makeshift shrines for all our highway martyrs: St Brandon,
St Jocelyn, St Victor. And I look up now at the names
of new lovers painted on bridges and water towers, these couplings
and wild letters that end with forever, that always
end with forever.
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