Alex Martin - Planing the Ragged Twilights

8. Planing the Ragged Twilights


Jackie, coal miner’s son
all elbows, rough crude profane,

a John Birch man, you can hear whisper
three fields away.

Jackie helped Rob & Daisy
make it through their last years.

& other folks on the Creek: getting up at five
stumbling around the hill to feed Rick’s steers,

then again, after dark - year after year
between ten-hour shifts in West Virginia,

eighty miles over the mountains.
“Done it for nothing,” he said.


Thus we keep rounding the days
planing the ragged twilights

fleecing and feeding
finishing the fences

currying the current droves
and driving them on

driven with them
& letting them go

as we go with them
with the flow.


As I climb a low mountain
into the open, into the evening

high upon its pebbly spine, I hear
the yapping of chained guard dogs

around a hundred kitchens
quoting their property rights:

encircling domestic circles
snarling with fortress fear

innocent of the fearful
wonder of Creation

wide sown, flung far
in everyone.

Planing the ragged twilights…
Planing the ragged twilights…