Catherine Pierce
Chadwick Lake, 8:15 a.m.
You’re trying to make the lake
something it isn’t. You’re trying
to make it a mirror, a meditation,
a mother. You’re trying, at least,
to make it a lake, but it isn’t even that.
It’s a half-lake, at best. It’s half-filled
with cattails and sludge. There’s a white bag
caught in the weeds. A bright yellow
bulldozer where there should be glint
and mallards. Why can’t you be
satisfied with the not-quite lake?
What are you still hoping might
surprise you? Why do you persist
in looking for a crisp mountain sky
when you know you live half
a country from the mountains?
Why are you always waiting for that day
in late October when the leaves
and the air and the distant hay smell
are all in exact and perfect proportion
to one another? Don’t you know
that’s a sure way to go through life
as if you’ve swallowed a tiny burning marble?
Look at these tread marks in the mud,
aren’t they their own small arrows of beauty?
Look at those cattails, don’t they bend like
any meadow flower or Adirondack fern?
So what if the ducks have flown off?
So what if the turtles have vanished?
Can’t you love the black plastic construction
fence, the diggers, the plumes of exhaust?
The white bag keeps blowing, though
there’s no wind today. You walk closer.
It’s an egret. Its long neck curved to preen,
feathers bright as the camera’s flash
at the moment everyone says surprise.
Catherine Pierce is the author of three books of poems: The Tornado Is the World ( 2016), The Girls of Peculiar (2012), and Famous Last Words (2008), all from Saturnalia Books. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry (2015 and 2011), Boston Review, Slate, Ploughshares, FIELD, and elsewhere. She co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. Her website is here: www.catherinepierce.net.
Return to January 2017 Edition
You’re trying to make the lake
something it isn’t. You’re trying
to make it a mirror, a meditation,
a mother. You’re trying, at least,
to make it a lake, but it isn’t even that.
It’s a half-lake, at best. It’s half-filled
with cattails and sludge. There’s a white bag
caught in the weeds. A bright yellow
bulldozer where there should be glint
and mallards. Why can’t you be
satisfied with the not-quite lake?
What are you still hoping might
surprise you? Why do you persist
in looking for a crisp mountain sky
when you know you live half
a country from the mountains?
Why are you always waiting for that day
in late October when the leaves
and the air and the distant hay smell
are all in exact and perfect proportion
to one another? Don’t you know
that’s a sure way to go through life
as if you’ve swallowed a tiny burning marble?
Look at these tread marks in the mud,
aren’t they their own small arrows of beauty?
Look at those cattails, don’t they bend like
any meadow flower or Adirondack fern?
So what if the ducks have flown off?
So what if the turtles have vanished?
Can’t you love the black plastic construction
fence, the diggers, the plumes of exhaust?
The white bag keeps blowing, though
there’s no wind today. You walk closer.
It’s an egret. Its long neck curved to preen,
feathers bright as the camera’s flash
at the moment everyone says surprise.
Catherine Pierce is the author of three books of poems: The Tornado Is the World ( 2016), The Girls of Peculiar (2012), and Famous Last Words (2008), all from Saturnalia Books. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry (2015 and 2011), Boston Review, Slate, Ploughshares, FIELD, and elsewhere. She co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. Her website is here: www.catherinepierce.net.
Return to January 2017 Edition