Jon Wolston's Poetry Archive

The garbage truck
pulls up outside.

The week begins
in earnest.

Big pharma
made me

misspell
Niagara.

Moonshine and silence.
A black line of mergansers
reconnoiters us,
wild and ennobling,
before they leave these parts
and the loons cry out.

I got lost off Nantucket once
says Doug.
Thirty miles off,
headed right into the Atlantic.
So much for hugging the shore.

As I stepped dripping
from the drink,
I chanced to spy
a startled mink.

I stood astride
his customed path
and set ablaze
his short-haired wrath.

He swaggered off
to look me over.
I caught him peering
through the clover.

His weaselly mug
and hot-dog size
stared down my urban
virgin eyes.

I walked away,
not valor-bound,
and he reclaimed
his hunting ground.

Through the trees–
the pink cliffs of Mount Percival,
still hazy at seven,
Phoebe’s goslings gone.
Silence in all its splendor,
shattered by the gulls.

Siberia sounds
good and cold
on a day when
eggs I’m told
bake on the sidewalk.

Irkutsk beckons
from afar
on a day when
cars and tar
resemble ovens.

Across the long bay
a bird swims through the blue air,
winging its way north.

The leaves move again
after two days in the nineties.

The lake is high
the water deep.
Of all the strands
this one I’ll keep.

The dogs float past
where I once strode
and telegraph
a special code:

The day is bright,
the evening long.
It’s safe to leap
so come along

and float beyond
the shoals of strife
to raise all boats
and moisten life.

The lake is high
the water deep.
Of all the strands
this one I keep.

Throngs of light
charge through the alley
calling the hydrangeas
This way! This way!

Pulling dandelions
after dark
you run a risk in
Central Park.