Voyages

By Jim Provencher

 1  Old Orchard Beach

 In the last place, where the river
enters the sea, where it
ripples into a larger whole,
my mother lived out
her final days, wandering
sea-oat anchored dunes,
wading the sea-edge,
gathering glinting shells
that caught her eye.

2  Then, Back When

 Some day in some forgotten way I might
tell truth too plain and hard to say tonight.
Might meet in some forgotten lane or street,
dare linger there, two who could have been more,
forever close the door on strife,
and so then stray, wander walk-talking
together again, taking no mind
of dark weather and rain.

3  Warning

 Waving goodbye from her porch,
the last time I saw her, my mother warned:
Don’t go down those trackless roads of pristine snow.

 4  Travel

The only place I go now, nowhere—
Not looking for sights but insights.

Scrutinize the Scorpion
where a hook of stars ends
in a lonely spark.

To be long at birth, to sing
full-throated songs into middle age.

January thaw—out walking.
Old chestnuts crunching underfoot.
Crossing the darkness.

Geese disappear—
back to myself
and sad.

Leaving the river—
loafing about,
eddying out.

Back to being
a bumpkin among moguls,
a place called home.

Back into
unerudite locality, growing
inchoate.

Basking in the afterglow,
winter sunsets—sensing
an optative mood coming on.

Foul water
dripping from a broken tap—
why fix it?

A few finger exercises
before launching into
the heavy work.

Roadside sign—
WOOD CUT, SPlIT
& DELIVERED

Footing it across Moose Pond,
gliding the gleam of snowless ice—
white lightning fracture cracks.

Winter witchgrass greens vacant hills,
rolling down to marshes where brackish water
freezes into florescent shell-ice.

5  Open Range

 Five years after the great drives began,
they brought the barbed wire in.

The sea of grass, Canada to Mexico,
open range open no more.

Left with no room to roam,
a man without a star.

Count him lucky, owned a few good horses,
kept a good name through 76 years.
Now more than a little cracked.

Winds blew through him like Blue Northers.
What’s it all been for?

Words herded into novel-sized ranches.
Here’s bad, there’s worse.
Bad things in a bad looking glass.

6  Alta

 We venture round the mountain
seeking little powder stashes, hurtling
down no-fall zones, skiing the deeps and steeps,
surfing our own small avalanches, etching
sharp 11s, dropping straight down the fall line.

We ski hard all day, sucking wind at high altitudes.
Side-step up Devil’s Tower for powder chutes,
bottomless snow that can swallow the best.

Reflexes wanting, I persevere, lean on technique
like a washed-up poet on the peaks.

Some runs, pristine perfect signatures,
unfurling down the blank white page.

7  Wintering Out

 Waking to new vacancy—
February gust rattles
seed pods in the chinaberry.

Tramping the rusty rail line
down to Alice’s Restaurant
where Alice in undersea light
is cooking up crinoids
on a fresh-scraped grill.

Still serving breakfast?
Anything, you can have anything
you want, anytime of the day.

A stand of cottonwood,
duff oak and leaf litter.
Springs that once sugared Sugar Creek
trickle brown and sour.

Moment to moment,
Life can be good but seems bad on the whole,
bottomed out in the hollows

Thick with bracken and fern,
snarls of briers and nameless weeds
Last of last snow hunkers in dark ravines.

8  Adios, El Paso

 Exiting Edgelands,
passing through, crossing over,
making the long journey back.

Like the Rio Bravo,
trickling away from greatness
promised at the source.

Fanning out nowhere
across dry playas
and hard salt pans.

9  Old Mission Trail

 Unfinished, everything still to be done.
Schoenberg’s absolute serialism,
Whitman’s extensive field of grass,
Shostakovich’s joyous Ninth.
Whispered names and musique concrete.

 Clothed in perfumed harmonies,
percussive Sonatinas prone to frenzy.
Digressive dalliances with variance.
Poetry no object but a way of life.