Sunday, September 15, 2019

like a downhill brakes-burned freight train full of pig iron ingots

  • Day one of this weekend's hikes, Thudner's vacation stomp, Cacapon State Park, near Berkeley Springs, eastern West Virginia panhandle, Ziler Loop, good hard uphill, hard, rocky (and rockwet) downhill, I said to Earthgirl I can't find my sticks, you can't find my sticks, I (k)need new sticks for rockwet downhills, the photo below the start of the downhill, it was 8o and humid and thunderstorm caught us but Fall is coming (update! day two):




  • Dinner Saturday night in Wincester, pedestrian mall, small private outdoor store, scored not only good maps of northern-most George Washington National Forest hiking but a new pair of Black Diamond FLZ sticks, break into three, fit into pack, don't have to strap to back, there's a reason all but two posts a year tagged My Complicity.








                       
AND STILL IT COMES

Thomas Lux

like a downhill brakes-burned freight train
full of pig iron ingots, full of lead
life-size statues of Richard Nixon,
like an avalanche of smoke and black fog
lashed by bent pins, the broken-off tips
of switchblade knives, the dust of dried offal,
remorseless, it comes, faster when you turn your back,
faster when you turn to face it,
like a fine rain, then colder showers,
then downpour to razor sleet, then egg-size hail,
fist-size, then jagged
laser, shrapnel hail
thudding and tearing like footsteps
of drunk gods or fathers; it comes
polite, loutish, assured, suave,
breathing through its mouth
(which is a hole eaten by a cave),
it comes like an elephant annoyed,
like a black mamba terrified, it slides
down the valley, grease on grease,
like fire eating birds’ nests,
like fire melting the fuzz
off a baby’s skull, still it comes: mute
and gorging, never
to cease, insatiable, gorging
and mute.

1 comment:

  1. and also -

    11 Forgotten Books of the 1920s Worth Reading Now

    Writers from the 1920s to Prime You for the 2020s

    By Bob Batchelor

    because batchelor added one book at the last minute, the url for this essay is

    https://lithub.com/10-forgotten-books-of-the-1920s-worth-reading-now/

    ReplyDelete