Trajectories

 This competent mother of nine guided them all past again on the way to the trees 

where they spend the night,  I get so excited taking pictures through the window-glass 

that I talk to them, praising their beauty.

Here is a closer view of two babies, looking for bugs.

Tonight I want you to follow the trajectory of the poem below, which I just discovered in an old Paris Review, Summer, 2007, page 142. It is by one of my favorite prose-poem writers, Vern Rutsala.

Sorry Roads

Their sorrow is something like

buyer's remorse. They chose

their paths but now regret it,

realizing---too late---they could 

have gone to the seashore

or forests of sweet pines.

But there is one I like, ignored

by engineers, looking like

the sorriest of them all. It's off

the map in Idaho and rises

and falls, goes over rickety bridges,

seems almost to lose its way

completely but finally staggers

into the yard of the old farm

one sepia evening, the years

peeling back like stripping bark

from a willow. It's the time 

the old man cleared the land

for the homestead and hammered

the old house together

with his bare fists.

Tonight I catch the scent

of sawdust, the new siding still

white as stripped willow.

Vern Rutsala  (1934-2014)

Six short four-line stanzas, clean language--nothing fancy, take you along the road. But the journey is also one long journey backwards in time, carried forth by intelligent words that have freight, like sepia. Read it again and follow the pattern of the thought,

Vern Rutsala died in April of this year. Here is a link to his obituary, which covers his work and career.

This remark about his writing is quoted in that obituaty:
"'I like to throw the blob of words on the page, then come back, maybe days later, to see what is still possible in the poem,' Rutsala said. "Then I'm able to shape it. Most language is trying to sell us something or deceive us. Poetry doesn't try to deceive."