The Garner
John Alexanderson
Air like a mountain lake. Sky grey as mystery,
an old mine road. Bootfalls staunch ruts
of crinkled leaves. shuush shuush shuush.
Dragonflies flick above a shaled stream and teenage truths
carved on benches sunk in goldenrod and thistle.
The maples spread shrouds on rusty tracks, beckon
to the pockmark lode beside a hill where one coalcar
waits corroded since the final freight moped off
into the vanish point of decades past. Gold laureates
from poplars on the gritty scene. The afternoon licks
of soon to rain, eases on the ties and trees like smoke.
Bluejays start to sort things out. A cat breaches weeds,
empty handed once again. Near a crumbling shed aprop
in poison oak and ivy I stroke his back he rubs my jeans.
We start to gather in our sheaves of path and possibility.