Buffalo Creek

My cousin did his weekends in the reserves,
playing soldier with real toys;
then the dam failed at Buffalo Creek.

Afterward, he told me everything.
The bodies he retrieved, snagged in trees
or buried in mud and under buildings,
were jaundiced and pale
as if daubed with weak watercolors.

Finally, he said what really stuck with him
was the smell.
Not just the smell of tragedy and decay,
but of an earth washed
and scrubbed to the nakedness of rock
and stone. It was the odor
of turning the garden in spring
and bringing up cupped hands,
to inhale a ready soil.

Geishas of Autumn

The tulips have danced
and bowed, the daylilies departed
from single afternoons in the sun,
the goldenrod remains as stringy
veins without ore.

A breeze rides like samurai
through the oaks and maples,
herds of severed leaves gallop
across the sidewalk.

Before the goldfinches took tour
they drained their summer
plumage onto the ginkgo.

Beneath the temple of branches
a thousand Lilliputian geishas,
porcelain faces tilted upward,
patiently wait
for their fans to fall.

Directions to My Place

“It’s not much more than a smudge in the road. That’s about the best way I can describe it. Don’t look for a sign. There’s nothing that says Welcome to Blue Jay, once one of the largest lumber camps in America, or just plain Blue Jay. Turn left at Beaver School and go up a few bends along the creek—it stays mostly on the driver’s side—then down the big dip, where the shocks give out and the muffler hits. If you get to the bridge, you went too far. Back up, slowly, or you’ll pass it again. Don’t worry about blinking; most people miss it with eyes wide open. I’ll be waiting for you on the front porch of the store.”

I saw their car lift over the knoll as though it might catch a curl of air and surf the rest of the way. A baby blue Chrysler with big fins and a fat chrome grille, it looked like an angry shark that was tired of scooping bug appetizers and was ready to swallow anything else in its path. Jim’s father was driving too fast, way too fast. I jumped off the wood steps and flailed my arms. The screech of their tires scattered the husky crows from the store’s emerald shingles, and left two long skid tracks smoking on the bleached blacktop. It was an historic kind of day. There were now three smudges on our narrow ribbon of pavement, a quiet place named Blue Jay and its pair of fresh landmarks. The crows got a new runway of sorts, something they could follow before banking ninety degrees left or right prior to perching on the roof’s peak, and I would have to start using an updated description.