For Our Fathers Teetering in Retirement
The buffet-tray-length snapper swims
as if its life depends on leisure; that is,
apace with the river & light, aloft
like a dj spinning didgeridoo or pan flute.
We are not enough inundated with
drugs or wonder & barely swayed —
no eelgrasses us, not even a wave.
But the wind unplugged a shingle
from the felt, then ripped a limb
from our sick maple & threw it in
our list of things to do. So, today
I climbed a ladder to the roof
& patched that then drove
the mower in a slowly narrowing loop
around our piece of future firewood.
Leisure is not at all what I thought it was.
What it would be. Leisure escapes me
when I look straight at it. Only work
of a certain kind appeases me. A phase
I think I’ll pass through. Get ready,
says the snapper, for what comes after.
* * * * *
Quarry
People in Alpena take
a longer time to say
as little as they like.
As Irish as they look —
freckled, pale, flushed —
climbing the steel steps
between highway & Huron
to gawk out at the breadth
of their calcite canyon,
they won’t say they feel gutted.
They might say, Anyone
who isn’t moved by this
is missing something. Then,
when the haul trucks dwindle
in the loads & loads of years
of loads, & the crater
won’t stop staring back,
they can drive a few miles
north to that rickety diner
for a huge slice of cream pie.
They can study each other
in a booth by the jukebox
until Michigan disappears
& all that’s left is blue
water they wade into,
letting it sweep them out,
so that their shoulders
are buoys & her hair
riddles the surface like
lake grass. Then, drying off
on the dune, she can drop
a flake of shell or bone
into a divot in the sand —
some funnel. Cascading
grains like the tinkling
bells of a boobytrap
bring the tan antlion
boomeranging up
from its underground blind.
Having found no ant to eat,
the tick-like lion tends to
descend to its perpetual
night & the boy
— a slight awareness
finely tuned — thinks
There’s no way these things
know what they’re doing.