Devil's Paintbrush

John Donlan

In my slow-burning archive orange hawkweed
thrives in granite-charactered soil
spalled off the basement stone,
a beaver labours up her steep skid road

logging poplar for food and shelter,
wind drives rivers of ripples down a pond.
Everything here knows what to do but me.
Like a bogus boiler inspector

I investigate every valve, work and rework
notes to husks, skeletal remains,
survivors who revive experience.
I try to memorize, to make some pictures

to walk into, in the final time
when I can't walk or hear or see, and see
lake-cradling pink granite, its orange earth,
its skin of lives flickering, flickering.


August 22, 2004

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

John Donlan's works copyright © to the author.