John Poch
Duck and Cover
The last of those to whom they showed the film,
we were amazed to see those children wait
like us, glued, floored for the bomb’s one fate
beneath the shelter of their desks. A kiln,
our classroom hardened us and set the glaze
of our eyes. Then recess came and we harassed
the bone-thin boy with the yellow hair aghast
on his head like a worn-out plastic doll, mussed, crazed,
his scalp gone sissy pink with fright. Relentless
as rock and roll, we sang a mean refrain
and beat the drums of panic close to pain,
taunting the boy to duck and cover, friendless.
Fed up, he pulled his hair out, showed it to us,
shocked, the next generation’s always clueless.
The Rio Grande
At the John Dunn Bridge some locals nearly let
their baby drown. He drifted off, face-down,
diaper-up, ten yards, before we cried
our incoherent warning to upset
their lunch. Mid-summer’s river’s a sluggish brown.
The waters start to clear and rapids subside.
Balloonists dip below the basalt ridge
at dawn to touch the water then rise to crown
the mesa. Just a mile from here, beside
himself, last week, another Gorge Bridge
suicide.
Sonnet on Time
You recognize what weight the currents carry:
imagining your body swims to learn
the river. But what pull below might bury
your errors, even troubles? What lusts burn
and might be baptized, raised surprised to the height
of love, floating? Earth the rivers shoulder
is imperceptibly removed like night
believing in its wisdom, as grows older
each star awakening to know its wrecked
and fixed position in a myth. Higher,
we ask how time exists beyond effect:
marrow in bone, electrons on a wire.
The river rises to meet the falling rain.
Whose strokes make Time sway on its gold watch chain?
John Poch is Professor of English at Texas Tech University. His book, Fix Quiet, winner of the New Criterion Prize,
will be published in late 2014.
Return to September 2014 Edition
The last of those to whom they showed the film,
we were amazed to see those children wait
like us, glued, floored for the bomb’s one fate
beneath the shelter of their desks. A kiln,
our classroom hardened us and set the glaze
of our eyes. Then recess came and we harassed
the bone-thin boy with the yellow hair aghast
on his head like a worn-out plastic doll, mussed, crazed,
his scalp gone sissy pink with fright. Relentless
as rock and roll, we sang a mean refrain
and beat the drums of panic close to pain,
taunting the boy to duck and cover, friendless.
Fed up, he pulled his hair out, showed it to us,
shocked, the next generation’s always clueless.
The Rio Grande
At the John Dunn Bridge some locals nearly let
their baby drown. He drifted off, face-down,
diaper-up, ten yards, before we cried
our incoherent warning to upset
their lunch. Mid-summer’s river’s a sluggish brown.
The waters start to clear and rapids subside.
Balloonists dip below the basalt ridge
at dawn to touch the water then rise to crown
the mesa. Just a mile from here, beside
himself, last week, another Gorge Bridge
suicide.
Sonnet on Time
You recognize what weight the currents carry:
imagining your body swims to learn
the river. But what pull below might bury
your errors, even troubles? What lusts burn
and might be baptized, raised surprised to the height
of love, floating? Earth the rivers shoulder
is imperceptibly removed like night
believing in its wisdom, as grows older
each star awakening to know its wrecked
and fixed position in a myth. Higher,
we ask how time exists beyond effect:
marrow in bone, electrons on a wire.
The river rises to meet the falling rain.
Whose strokes make Time sway on its gold watch chain?
John Poch is Professor of English at Texas Tech University. His book, Fix Quiet, winner of the New Criterion Prize,
will be published in late 2014.
Return to September 2014 Edition