Poetry

Spring 2008

 

 

Robert Wrigley

After a Rainstorm

Because I have come to the fence at night,
the horses also arrive from the ancient stable.
They let me stroke their long faces, and I note
in the light of the now-emerging moon

how they, a Morgan and a quarter, have been
by shake-guttered raindrops
spotted around the rumps and made
Appaloosas, the ancestral horses of this place.

Maybe because it is night, they are nervous,
or maybe because they too sense
what they have become, they seem
to be waiting for me to say something

to whatever spirits might still abide here,
that they might awaken from this dream,
in which there are fences and stables and a man
who knows no words they understand.

 

Progress

You begin to fear all the nowheres are somewheres now.
Everywhere's been discovered. Is there anywhere you can go
and find a hair-netted octogenarian wrangling a walker
and four massive, camp-sized cast iron skillets full

of Sunday dinner fried chicken at 9:00 a.m.
and ask if she's serving breakfast, then have her say,
"Sure thing, hon, but you'll have to wait on yourselves"?
Remember how pretty you were? Well, your sweetheart was

beautiful and all you wanted was some
sunnyside-up eggs and bacon with hashbrowns,
a white boat of peppery pan gravy,
and a mason jar of homemade apple butter

you'd have to pry the disk of wax out of
and dollop on your toast with a long-shanked teaspoon.
These days Main Street features two antiques emporia,
a coffee shop, and a wine store offering Friday night

tastings of the latest regional Cab Franc cuvée.
The café's become an office dealing in view lots,
weekend lakeside rentals, and time share condominiums.
That was twenty-five years ago, you tell yourself.

The old chicken-frying woman probably never saw
what's become of the place, though what with the baskets
of brightly colored artificial geraniums hanging
from the vintage lampposts and the new pocket park

with a memorial to the loggers of yesteryear,
she'd probably approve. There's a new high school too
and according to its electronic marquee sign,
not only is there a girls' basketball team but they've won

the state three-B championship for the second time this year.
And probably the granola and yogurt breakfast parfait
with seasonal fruit from California's central valley
you had this morning was better for your arteries anyway.

Your sweetheart's still beautiful and you're willing
to settle for distinguished or fairly well preserved,
but the jam this morning comes in those tiny single-serving jars
sealed with a stirrup of foily paper, and you remember

how that morning's apple butter was explosive with cinnamon
and cloves, how the tang came from the cooked
to submission red and golden mottled peelings,
and how the old lady wheeled and toddled

over to the kitchen doorway and called you back to
"Try this for a finish up," and it was a plank of sweet cream
strudel still warm from the oven, a perfect square of butter
liquefying itself on top, and you and your sweetheart split it

and because of it all fell more deeply in love than before,
and after paying the ridiculously tiny bill and thanking
the kindly cook, drove up the lake road and found
a perfect spot in what is now an eighteen hole, pro-designed

golf course, and made love on a grandmotherly quilt,
within a body's length of the cold clear water,
and lay there for an hour in the sun, as naked and easy
as no one in that place will ever be again.

 

 

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