J. Kirk Maynard

Three poems after oppen

 

"In time the Rockies will crumble"

                              - Ira Gershwin

 

 

                              Montana

 

That an egg cannot be unbroken.

Each object in space accelerates.

 

Travel               here.

What is it about

baby steps?      transport rights?

 

Count one, two, three – then go!

 

 

Hurrying time does not happen           here.

From cirque to moraine the forest grows.

 

Moose calf and mother. Pack mules

for the trails to distant private dams.

J. Kirk Maynard

                              Our Wars

 

The cuckoo hatchling dropped the eggs out of the nest and the mother

kept feeding. The eggs sank into the lake.

 

The cuckoo is a selfish bird, and ugly.

This is the subject                          we suffer

              and spilling out                              we leave that nest

              and all the eggs inside.

 

Over a surface of water, at right light and daytime, the surface

is black or green or blue. Abrupt

 

perspectives                  shift. That’s the trouble:

did you come to this house to build this garden and paint this wall?

 

I came to this house to / I came to this wall for //

 

I traveled long miles and didn’t rest / I slept in until noon.

J. Kirk Maynard

                              “The covenant is:

                              There shall be peoples”*

 

We slid down the back of Mt. Colden like we would any spine,

into the lake. It began to rain.

Further along at the campsite, an Ontario banker from South

 

Dakota was cooking dinner. He had money

and had been to all states but four: Hawaii, Alaska, Vermont,

 

and Kansas. Don said, “skip Kansas,” still angry

over a demonstration outside his school by “a bunch

of Dorothys and Tin Men and Scarecrows.

 

“Lost. No brains, hearts.”

 

The banker went over the other mountain the next day, up

and over, and we went through Avalanche Pass

and back to Schenectady.

 

                                                         In the morning

by the lake, we climbed rain-slick boulders,

and lovely granite cliffs with unburdened clear water.

J. Kirk Maynard

* Three poems after Oppen” pg. 2.

              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © J. Kirk Maynard. White Whale Review, issue 2.1