by Joel Fry
On the Farm
I need evidence that I have not changed, something
sound within me, a voice that answers the wind when it
blows here on the hill. The stars respond to the darkness
twinkle by twinkle, and I realize I am waking to a porch light
in the distance. Cars pass beyond the house. The susurrus
of their motion makes for peaceful thinking. When I walk
to the edge of the pasture a bellowing bull intrudes on my sadness.
Is this sadness? I forget what brings me here, what illumination
at the end of August, hot and feverish, blasts me baked
and muscular. Somewhere far away waves crash ashore,
constantly changing, but the process by which they break
remains the same. A girl is strolling by the sea, and by
the chambers of the sea she sees the end of all things.
By fire light her eyes narrow to a speck on the horizon,
a ship slipping away hauling fish to a spot barely
charted on the globe. She hears her name and is reminded
of all the places she has never been, of the land she cannot
cross. I am her tonight, in this farm that holds me captive,
word and deed, jot and tittle, a way out and a way
of knowing there is no escape.
On the Road
No one needs to know where I’m going on the coldest day
of the year, my vision spread out across the highway, taking in all
the land has to offer—the pastures, houses, creeks, junk piles.
I listen to what the tire tread does on the ice, and I long to see
what must come, what little and large must be, strangers who move
ahead of the snow in the insular hours, hermits bound to secrecy,
recluses bound to lives of closets and time. On the road my life makes
sense. What I’ve been told becomes background. No guilt arises
in my rearview mirror, no chattering or praying hands, no shame.
I prepare in moments of mercy for hours of rage when distance
develops an itch. At pit stops I shave and set my clock, observe
the rising sun, the fleeing deer. What more is there to know than
what I see? A man tells me that the world is growing violent around me,
and I cannot stop it. I tell him the world is not my concern.
The stained-glass morning comes, its face a broken yolk. I watch
the headlights form shadows, the miles ahead a mystery.
****
Joel Fry lives in Athens, Alabama. His poetry has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, The Florida Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere. His first book of poetry is Late Alabama (Outskirts, 2020).