Narrow Road, President's Day

American Poetry Review, The, May/Jun 1998 by Booth, Philip

As I drive by

the architect's

house, his wife's

just opening up

the sideyard window

and leaning out

on her elbows to

talk with three

backyard sheep.

She smells spring.

Given sun trying

to break through

dawn fog, fog after

all-night rain, on

top of two months

of old snow, she

gives herself

gasps of light.

Not a mile back,

just beyond Harman's

Farm Stand, all

boarded-up against

winter, almost at

the new place where

they sell Russian

tractors, I sniffed

skunk, first time

this year. Had to

swerve my pickup

to keep from side

swiping the skunk,

already dead. And

next to him, for

Christ's sake, a big

mother porcupine,

dying hard.

I kept on driving

to work. I keep

on now, holiday

or no, my whole

morning messed up

by road-kill, wannabe

Presidents, street

bombs, cyberspace,

Bosnia, and what's to

become of the former

United States, an

America only once

divisible. Half

blinded by freeflow

tears and new sun,

I find myself

still touched by

the woman talking

with sheep. I try

to figure what they

say to each other;

and when, if spring

happens, the new

lambs will come.

Now in his eighth decade, Philip Booth looks forward to his tenth volume of poems in 1999.