Poetry

Dusk on the Logging Road Below
Tumbledown and Little Jackson

I

Clouds, the dry cups,
the mountain lamps.

The pause that follows
the slipping away, slipped away sun,

our petals
of blood carried down

dark galleries
to the cupboards of summer.

A trickling perdition
at the road edge, our exhaustion

as crickets
build their pillars.

We move among the second causes.

II

Earlier and still ourselves we tramped
the chimneys of Maine,

along green eaves,
sky-sides and shingles.

We heaved ourselves
over the outcrops like trunks

of soul, we beat ourselves
like rags against the boards,

we bit into peaches
and the rivers

ran along our necks, by the blue rivers
of our necks,

the many rivers.

David Troupes