North To Rutland
by William Doreski
Cowboy singers mourn the Fifties,
Hank Williams and two-tone Chevys,
Stevenson versus Ike. Too bad,
but a dank chilly wind surges
from a limestone cave on Dorset Peak
where a red-haired muse abandoned me
and my hair turned white. It happens
to everyone. The valley fills
with the hoot of a diesel engine
and rattle of empty hopper cars.
On the bypass a head-on crash
subtracts two from the population.
Tourists browse a historic house,
writing their initials in the dust.
can't remember that woman's name,
but the green down vest she wore
as she steered her Saab up the hill
past the abandoned marble quarry
lingers in the corner of my eye.
the villages clench and relax, clench
and relax. A gravel truck swerves
down a narrow road. A child
doesn't get out of the way. A dog
barks because the Angel of Death
wears such a musty billow of cloud.
She would claim it's always like this,
of the earth, the railroad harp-strung
and reeking of oil, the highways
too dangerous, villages ripe
with expensive retirees. I worked
awhile tending bar for the ski crowd
and made a modest fortune in tips.
and everything became the color
of snow. I took my haircut hair back
to the city, but the cold breath
of the mountains had filled me,
Hank Williams and Patsy Cline
still haunting the airwaves, the wax
on my old Chevy still gleaming,
and Eisenhower still golfing
as the train rattles north to Rutland
and the bedrock crumbles like cake.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. His most recent collection of poetry is Waiting for the Angel (2009). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell's Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge.
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