Michael Lauchlan
Shingling
for Jerry Jackson
The ninety pound bundle once
bit into his shoulder and neck;
his legs shook on the rungs while
roofers laughed above and below―
happy, he knows, now, to wait.
Now he shoves the pack of asphalt
past the eave to the bottom plank
which bounces on its jacks as he throws
it down. He fills his teeth with nails,
runs the rows straight, butting ends,
gauging the tabs, raingrooves aligned,
each nail sealed in the overlapping wisdom
of tar. Shirt off on south slopes
in April, skin heating up while threats
and jive rise from streets and porches,
he hears his men ridicule women
or miss lost kids. The hatchet
falls in its staccato arc, clacking out
the pain of split thumb, crooked back,
how he worries about his wife, his boy,
about the creak of a sky newly dark.
Storm
With the first drops, the storm
snapped the willow, smacked a limb
to the ground, so the dog quivered
to our door with me a step behind.
My chainsaw coughed long enough
to throw the chain and send me
searching for screwdrivers, bar oil,
and rags. All year a bench collects
the vestige of tasks like odd parts
of days. Bench therapy is crude.
I scrape nails and screws into cans
of nails and screws. Drill bits
are shelved. Pipe wrenches rejoin
the plumbing bucket. Finally,
I pry the saw’s orange case
to gaze into a greasy mystery,
knowing I’ll end up at the hardware,
in a line of old guys with dead saws.
A vague dread makes me try
to trust my hands. After an hour,
oiled and gassed, the saw starts
and runs rough, then steadies.
I climb a ladder to a perch
in the crotch, and cut a groove
around the broad limb as my hand
goes numb and my son holds
tension on a rope to save the fence.
When I bear down it digs
through bark and green wood.
What’s left of the branch falls hard,
burrows into sod softened by rain,
littered with fronds. We carve
what’s left into stumps for the chipper
and lug it all to the curb
panting and grunting as quiet
returns and the chainsaw cools.
Unseen Larks and Immeasurable Intervals
“…while the animals fall
one at a time at immeasurable intervals.”
W.S. Merwin
A songbird vanishes behind a tree and the eye
makes futile chase. Lips await a kiss. Mashed,
a thumb throbs for hours. The heart grieves
interminable delays. An old woman waits
on death or some late arriving guest,
disremembers yesterday and this morning
and whether it is morning yet or that
Christmas is at hand―the birth of hope
in a poor, naked child, longing relit
in fools who hear midnight carolers and
crane toward a song flitting out of reach,
then fading out of mind. But I swear
that once they sang from our dark street
like so many angels. Into the night we lean.
Michael Lauchlan has had poems in many publications including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Nimrod, (forthcoming), New Plains (forthcoming), Ninth Letter, Apple Valley Review, Waccamaw, Natural Bridge, Collagist, Tampa Review, The Cortland Review, and Innisfree. He has recently been awarded the Consequence Prize in Poetry and has been included in Abandon Automobile, from Wayne State University Press and in A Mind Apart, from Oxford University Press.
Return to March 2013 Edition
for Jerry Jackson
The ninety pound bundle once
bit into his shoulder and neck;
his legs shook on the rungs while
roofers laughed above and below―
happy, he knows, now, to wait.
Now he shoves the pack of asphalt
past the eave to the bottom plank
which bounces on its jacks as he throws
it down. He fills his teeth with nails,
runs the rows straight, butting ends,
gauging the tabs, raingrooves aligned,
each nail sealed in the overlapping wisdom
of tar. Shirt off on south slopes
in April, skin heating up while threats
and jive rise from streets and porches,
he hears his men ridicule women
or miss lost kids. The hatchet
falls in its staccato arc, clacking out
the pain of split thumb, crooked back,
how he worries about his wife, his boy,
about the creak of a sky newly dark.
Storm
With the first drops, the storm
snapped the willow, smacked a limb
to the ground, so the dog quivered
to our door with me a step behind.
My chainsaw coughed long enough
to throw the chain and send me
searching for screwdrivers, bar oil,
and rags. All year a bench collects
the vestige of tasks like odd parts
of days. Bench therapy is crude.
I scrape nails and screws into cans
of nails and screws. Drill bits
are shelved. Pipe wrenches rejoin
the plumbing bucket. Finally,
I pry the saw’s orange case
to gaze into a greasy mystery,
knowing I’ll end up at the hardware,
in a line of old guys with dead saws.
A vague dread makes me try
to trust my hands. After an hour,
oiled and gassed, the saw starts
and runs rough, then steadies.
I climb a ladder to a perch
in the crotch, and cut a groove
around the broad limb as my hand
goes numb and my son holds
tension on a rope to save the fence.
When I bear down it digs
through bark and green wood.
What’s left of the branch falls hard,
burrows into sod softened by rain,
littered with fronds. We carve
what’s left into stumps for the chipper
and lug it all to the curb
panting and grunting as quiet
returns and the chainsaw cools.
Unseen Larks and Immeasurable Intervals
“…while the animals fall
one at a time at immeasurable intervals.”
W.S. Merwin
A songbird vanishes behind a tree and the eye
makes futile chase. Lips await a kiss. Mashed,
a thumb throbs for hours. The heart grieves
interminable delays. An old woman waits
on death or some late arriving guest,
disremembers yesterday and this morning
and whether it is morning yet or that
Christmas is at hand―the birth of hope
in a poor, naked child, longing relit
in fools who hear midnight carolers and
crane toward a song flitting out of reach,
then fading out of mind. But I swear
that once they sang from our dark street
like so many angels. Into the night we lean.
Michael Lauchlan has had poems in many publications including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Nimrod, (forthcoming), New Plains (forthcoming), Ninth Letter, Apple Valley Review, Waccamaw, Natural Bridge, Collagist, Tampa Review, The Cortland Review, and Innisfree. He has recently been awarded the Consequence Prize in Poetry and has been included in Abandon Automobile, from Wayne State University Press and in A Mind Apart, from Oxford University Press.
Return to March 2013 Edition