Issue 15, January/February 1998
Michael Billard - Three Poems

There below the barn is a field.
Infused with grain, it fans out
Across the valley to where,
Near the river,
It narrows
To an alley of bottomland.

It is there, where the formal repetition
Of the farmland ends,
Where a rutted road marks the far extent
Of my father’s work.
And the trees, having abandoned
Their vertical reach
For a more relaxed shape,
Bend toward the river bank
In an informal bow.
And the unusual arthritic twist
Of an ancient branch
Affords a perch well beyond the water’s edge.

There, save for one scar;
The healed wound of a heart
Carved into the body of a tree,
And a dozen scattered stones
Whose scorched faces once faced inward,
Remains nothing worth noting,
Nothing to indicate anything
More remarkable than the seasonal
Rising of the river, or the occasional
Passing of a canoe ever occurred.

The branches of the birch are now all bare.
The last of the leaves were tugged and torn
from their limbs by a determined wind.
I watched from your window as each was released,
Pitched and twirled in the tide, then landed,
Tumbling point to stem, across the yard.
They scattered beyond the drive toward your stone
Where a few caught against the granite face,
Paused briefly and then, slipping past,
Continued into the field.

These days you’ve not much to offer
The casual traveler.
No tourist would ever come to you
Without having first gotten lost.
There is no time of day or certain light
That draws you even part way out
Of your own dim shadow.
I’ve walked your streets at all hours;
Seen you through the rippled reflections
Of heat off your lone strip of black tar,
Counted stars in the deep dark
From one of your hills.
Stripped naked I’ve swum in the festering
Channel that served you a century ago.
For years I’ve worked you with the practiced ease
Of a man working a wife.
I claim no allegiance to you,
Yet I return again and again.
You are my albatross,
And only death will rid you of me.