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Sunset Lake

by Michael Finley

Published in one day
in an edition of one
for Barry Brent.

For a nicer text, download the e-book version.

I SAW A DEER, NOW
I HAVE TO WRITE A POEM

I saw a deer bolt onto Highway 5, down by the airport,
where the construction workers are fixing the bridge.
Sudden it was there, standing by the shoulder,
its side rough-looking as if scraped against stone,
then bolting into traffic, dodging cars, leaping over the lane divider,
skidding away from a trailer truck, then vaulting
onto a bank of unaccustomed slag, and dancing, whitetail
bounding, back into the trees.
{ { {
The wrong place at the wrong time, rush hour,
it was lucky it didn't get run over.
Motorists were shocked, workers stared open-mouthed.
The frantic look in the deer's eyes spelled
terror, confusion, the suggestion of reproach.
{ { {
Deer and construction sites don't go together,
the deer so fragile sprinting between bulldozers.
There is an overarching sense
that road construction is wrong
and cars should pull over and give the natural order
the right of way and any poet
seeing a deer in the wild must file a complete report,
express solidarity with the animal,
remorse for the brute thud of mankind,
acknowledge complicity in the scaring
of innocent blood.
{ { {
I was thinking that if deer
had really short legs and made grunting noises
there would be a lot less poems about them.
{ { {
But I do feel bad.
If we do decide to call the earth a learning experience
and rocket away to make another start,
maybe before we leave we could set up cameras
around the world so we could look back sometimes
from a perfect world at the world we let go,
and maybe see a fawn and doe
nibbling the bark of a sapling jutting
from a crack in Highway 5.

The Wolf House

Needing a roof on a windy night
we came upon a shack above the logging zone.
We tiptoed in the twilight,
afraid someone was inside,
and if so, what they might be.
No one was there so we made our beds
and slept. In the morning
we saw the claw marks in the wood,
and the hair in handfuls,
suddenly free, and drifting
out the door.

Signs

Every hundred yards in the Wisconsin woods
there are signs posted saying
No Hunting and No Trespassing.
People leave their cabins when the weather gets cold,
and do not want to return to a shot-through window
or knocked over pumphouse.
And a good sign, suggesting violators will be prosecuted
seems to keep most people away, except for
some hunters who need everything spelled out.
You can tell a salesman made his rounds some time ago
because the dayglo veneer has peeled away from every sign
leaving three dry leaves of plywood sheeting.
So that every hundred yards is a tree
with a perfectly blank sign on it.
The gray of the bark crisscrosses the knots
and whorls of the plywood,
gray from the rain and north woods wind,
a wordless advertisement to wilderness,
a message the animals read as well as you
saying this is this, and here is more,
and a few steps further into the pines, still more.

Children

When we are little it is hard
to believe we will turn into our parents.
Grown ups are so ugly and so tired
with orange pads on the bottoms of their feet,
the pores of their faces cry out surrender,
and the hair, the hair is everywhere,

But once we are grown we have only
to look at a child to glimpse what they will become.
The face fills out, the limbs acquire bulk.
The boy enters a door and exits his father
like a breed of ordinary dog.
Or the boy roars into his fruition
the malification of his mother,
her beauty beaten into him like bronze
and ramping out again
like laughter to the world.

Applause for Crow

I believe you are the blackest bird I ever saw,
blacker than blackbird or raven, grackle or daw.
Your wingspread blacker than onyx without flaw,
Lacquered jacket black as a chaw
of tar or ink or the mountain blueberries in your craw.
Your eye so keen there ought to be a law,
Diving down and snatching every stray gewgaw
Clutch of diamond, gum wrapper or straw,
snatched quicker than a talon or a monkey's hairy paw,
spurs remorseless as a mongoose claw.
Mightier in legend than the donkey's jaw,
from the ice of January to April's dreary thaw,
from summer's roasted pastures to autumn's hem and haw.
Your disdain for the usual forest foofraw,
your pitlilessness for feathered things carried off in a wet dog's maw,
and tendency to repeat yourself are transwoodland topics of awe.
Over and over every morning, the first breath I draw
that voice like tearing paper, only still more raw,
the hard spank of morning cries caw.

MINIVAN

We could not afford a good one but this
was good enough for us,
brown high-rider, automatic, slant six.
When we bought it we were in awe,
it smelled like road angel,
and though it had already rolled
ninety thousand uphill miles
with strangers in its seats
we felt it had been waiting all along
for us. I washed it, and stickered it,
and drove it to the store.
We were partners, it and I.
So when I left it for an hour at the park
and some guy smashed the passenger
window with a tire iron and stole
several hundred dollars of audio tapes
I got at the library for our trip out west,
I blamed myself, I should never
have left my treasure alone.
And when we sailed west through badlands
and buttes, and we filled our thermos
at Wall Drug, and bought doughnuts for the kids
it was with a new covenant between us,
a promise to take care of her.
We parked it near the motel door every night,
we locked it up and took the cameras inside.
And when I left our wallet and cash
on a trash receptacle at a convenience store
high in the Montana Rockies,
and we realized it was gone
and had a look in our eyes that had elements
of hope and elements of despair
and we sped back twenty miles up the mountain
our minds hard from wishing,
and there it was, people walking by,
good decent wallet-ignoring Montañards,
and we drove on, toward the Idaho border
and beyond that, to the brightening sea,
tearful with happiness and love
for you, Grand Voyager, for you.

Microwave

I hit the 30-second button,
and being busy, step to my office,
hit a key on my PC, and walk back
to the kitchen. Bing, coffee's warm.
But where did the 30 seconds go.
Like a card pulled from a deck
that gets smaller and smaller,
like the tiny waves hurled round the machine,
banging on the glass of time.

Roads

Roads speed through the countryside,
every bend a mystery, every moment of unevenness a jolt
into something new and not known.
Roads on islands are conflicted because they do not get you anywhere really,
they are failures and sorry.
The dead end road is indeed a death, sudden and irreversible,
we avoid them at all costs
until the one time we wish to go someplace and not return.
Macadam, asphalt, concrete, slag,
blacktop, gravel, cobbles, tar.
Mountain roads that turn cars into athletes, grinding uphill
and then falling, falling all the way down,
a shiver down every spine.
Shore roads and causeways that lick the water and the water licks them.
City streets boulevards illuminated as if each passing car were on parade.
Alleys where cats trip by on tiptoes.
Frontage roads like caged animals prowling their perimeters, pining to be free.
Expressways and beltways that traffic courses through like blood through muscle,
cars by the thousand, every destination important.
suburban lanes that guide us to our garages,
the narrow road that leads me home to you.

Witnesses

Three women at Perkins sit in front of me,
a mother and her daughters. The youngest,
in glasses, wears fuchsia lipstick and matching
fuchsia suit, with four silver buttons
on each sleeve. The sister has a sleepy, dragged out beauty,
and unbrushed hairdo. You can make out the lines
of her brown arms through the sleeves.
The mother sits with her black pocketbook in her lap,
the strap looped around one wrist.
They appear to have rules about conversation,
taking respectful turns.
Though their eyes light up, and slight smiles glide on their faces,
not one word is audible twelve feet away, and no one laughs
or touches. I wonder if they are discussing the people
they met at the doors they knocked,
who seemed interested in the message they brought with them,
and who did not extend them the courtesy of respect.
Then the food arrives, hamburgers, cokes and fries,
and the women in their Sunday clothes bow their heads and pray.

PLAN

I know what I will do. I will drive a long way
north, to the wilderness, and pitch
my tent, and wait.
And when a tree nearby has had enough and
is ready to fall to the forest floor,
I will be on hand to see what sound it
makes, and report to you.

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I SAW A DEER, NOW I HAVE TO WRITE A POEM