In the Parking Lot of the Muffler Shop

Hudson Review, The, Summer 2003 by Tillinghast, Richard

for Gary Snyder

Between the muffler shop and the Shell station

three pines that survive where four were planted

on a strip of earth five feet across, forty long,

spill their seed cones out onto asphalt.

The pungency of eight stunted junipers

quickens the lunchtime air.

I kick indifferently among

the jetsam that has sedimented up

against the curb somebody

once painted white and then forgot about.

Dandelions take root in black sand

among filter tips, pine needles,

the snapped-off bottleneck from a longneck Bud,

rust and rubber of

manufactured parts that made cars go and stop,

things that appeased the snarl of engines

and spread the pollution out evenly.

Cool air smelling of tires and gear-box oil

exhales from the service bay of the muffler shop

as from a mountain cave.

Inside, the measured clank of heavy tools

applied with deliberation.

Three trees don't make a forest.

I sit in the shade of this reservation

between a white Cadillac and a red pine,

while some voice says to me:

Archaeologize the ordinary.

Sing songs about the late Machine Age.

Chronicle the in-between.

In the vacancy of noon,

sparrows twitter. At a distance, a phone rings.

Right here where they have spent the whole of their lives,

three pine trees stand.