Along the valley floor a freight
train snakes along, writhing
in April gray. A highway slinks
among farms no longer farmed,
abandoned barns collapsing
in mock despair. You and I
have traveled this route so often
we’ve engraved it on our bones
like scrimshaw. Bellows Falls,
Westminster, Putney. The names loll
on our tongues. At a steep bend
two cars have met head-on.
The ambulance has come and gone,
and a fire engine hoses away
gasoline pooled on the asphalt.
We’ve often thought of ending
this way, the sneer of wreckage
gnashing with unspeakable pain,
dark pouring over and through us.
Today, though, disaster struck
others, leaving us innocent
as a pair of socks. We drive south
and park in Putney Village to snack
on something rich and sugary
and impose a more gradual fate
on bodies we no longer admire.
The day declines in various
shades of digression. War continues
in the Middle East and Africa.
Coal mining opens great sores.
Politicians offer hope and dreams
while cocaine improves the sleep
of millions of broken psyches.
We douse our talk with coffee
and gaze across a greening lawn
to count the parked cars gleaming
under cloud cover tough as leather;
and we agree that highway death
probably lingers much longer
than the extinction we impose
on each other every day.
William Doreski
My work has appeared in a bunch of other magazines, both e and print, and in a few collections. I try to teach writing and literature at Keene State College in New Hampshire, the state where politicians come every four years to thoroughly embarrass and humble themselves the way the rest of us do by living here.
