monday poem #103: Francine Sterle, "Abandoned Road" (from A Single Gesture)
I love having friends who loan me amazing poetry I would never have known about otherwise.
I think I like Francine Sterle a lot. I had a really difficult time deciding which poem to post. I settled on this one - which is the last of the six parts of "A Single Gesture" - because I have been thinking about place again lately.
I think elynross might like this one.
Abandoned Road
Stalled in iron-colored mud,
a rusted truck. The woman's walked
back to the farmhouse for the night
having sworn at the grinding engine for an hour.
A trio of crows has given up
its flagrant squawking. Even
the deer have departed to bed down
deeper in the woods, leaving behind
a path of trampled grass. The moon's
tapering light shines off the chrome.
There is only moon and chrome and mud
and newly budded twigs hanging off
five hundred acres of trees. This is the world
philosophers say disappears when it isn't seen,
an unteachable region of the mind, begging
faith, and for those who fall in love with it,
faith begins with a single gesture
inward and ends outside in grace.
- Francine Sterle
from Every Bird is One Bird
I think I like Francine Sterle a lot. I had a really difficult time deciding which poem to post. I settled on this one - which is the last of the six parts of "A Single Gesture" - because I have been thinking about place again lately.
I think elynross might like this one.
Abandoned Road
Stalled in iron-colored mud,
a rusted truck. The woman's walked
back to the farmhouse for the night
having sworn at the grinding engine for an hour.
A trio of crows has given up
its flagrant squawking. Even
the deer have departed to bed down
deeper in the woods, leaving behind
a path of trampled grass. The moon's
tapering light shines off the chrome.
There is only moon and chrome and mud
and newly budded twigs hanging off
five hundred acres of trees. This is the world
philosophers say disappears when it isn't seen,
an unteachable region of the mind, begging
faith, and for those who fall in love with it,
faith begins with a single gesture
inward and ends outside in grace.
- Francine Sterle
from Every Bird is One Bird