POETRY GARAGE
All poems copyright Dave Hedenstrom 2013
All poems copyright Dave Hedenstrom 2013
I Am Five
Two dirt tracks and a median of high wild grass. In the silent happy company of goldenrod, raspberries, butterflies, birches, we walked toward a stream you knew was there - Grasshoppers whirring away as we passed. Darning-needle flies weaving us into the thick warm air. In truth, I must have been foolish, and talked too much, and whined. You must have lost your patience with me and made us stay just a little too long. But sometimes when I fish within I hook this time-rinsed memory where I am five, and you are Father, and life is green and living all around. In the Garden During the Bombing of Yugoslavia
Mary surveys the garden while raking in April: the astilbe's coming back; the hydrangea survived our drastic pruning after all; so many green things returning to life, little thanks to us. History tells us it's likely Yugoslavia too will grow back one day, in one form or another, but not with so little effort. Meanwhile we're news-numb, mostly inured to the suffering -- the burned villages, the mass graves; smart-bomb rubble, inevitable civilian casualties officially regretted, refugee families or fragments of families lined up for miles in the cold; too much for us to absorb, maybe, like weeks of rain on saturated land; or is it simply the trick of hope turned to denial, the thought that this could never happen again? Gifts
Riding the urgent automatic freeway one morning in March, there appeared -- up there -- a gift: garland of ragged clouds ringing the roofed and smoke-stacked horizon trying on, in quick succession, all the various shades of sunrise; and more: to the west one maverick cloud of startling luminosity -- big flying billboard, courtesy Monet advertising color -- promulgating light -- fading to white even as my eyes lifted it out of its wind-wrapped box. |
Next Exit
Crossing the Rand McNallyscape we could see them beside the next exit: colorful signs with simple logos raised high on poles above truck plazas, burger palaces, budget motels - lollipops of promise for the weary. Like silly stick puppets they vie for your eye. They are a class of kindergarterners raising their hands, each certain of the right answer. We would exit now if we could, expecting nothing special, the way it should be in four-lane America, along the speed-and-comfort corridors that push blindly through the countryside like an obnoxious companion whose rudeness toward others works to our advantage. We would exit now if we could, but tonight we're headed for Omaha. After Ice Fishing
Trudge after Dad across the ice at dusk, leave the slushy hole behind, no more sitting on a bucket warming hands while waiting for a nibble. Pail of sunnies in tow, pack the poles in the back of a big Chevy wagon. Not long and the heater will kick in, seeping some warmth back into small frozen fingers, faces, toes. Dad driving, we lie down way in back, feet forward, eyes looking right up at the rear-gate window. Night now, the slanted glass catches all the passing lights -- headlight and taillights, street lights and lit signs (could have been anything: gas station, restaurant, supermarket, motel) and mixes them together into a blaze of moving stars... And suddenly, like the Starship Enterprise, we are floating through the galaxy, sun after sun falling steadily past. Radio sounds from up front mingle with the hypnotic hum of the rear wheels below, the game announcer's muscular tones riding the tense-and-relax waves of the crowd's roar, voices rising and falling, rising and falling, and star after star streamily steadily by us, by us, by us in the warmth. Genies Along the highway when the weather is cold, exhaust is visible, white wisps whipping out from tailpipes and gone; out and gone like smoke from rubbed lamps -- but the genies (except in the vast wishland of TV and web sites and slick magazines) won't body up to grant wishes. Still, we keep rubbing, rubbing. |