Dark News for Belchertown. A man
jittery in his white nylon jumpsuit
enters the garage to be with his snow blower
as a neighbor plows the driveway.
There is a relationship between the light
on the table and the distance between
Spade and Archer. Across the street
my father huddles in his foreign car
convinced the snow banks completely obscure
him from view. English guns, big
headlines for war, rewarding ignorance
with money, picking iron out of your
liver. The train passes a roadless bridge
remembered by its concrete supports,
three shoddy thumbs up
above the snow-covered ice.
The secretary wears her hat
like a mortician and still Spade struggles
to make heads or tails.
Windsor Locks, Windsor, Hartford.
Small herds of carry-ons gather
outside empty train stations
half-cutting in a nebulous line.
Blest patrons of the Italian
fusion restaurant sit aside
a lake of snow and eat bruschetta
with a spoon, and here my father
explains the incalculable
difference between terminal
and incurable. The next movie
features rivers of blood and teenagers
piloting sentient WMDs. In the heat
of action, men are forests:
the threat of death cannot stop
or move them. The snow gathers
and muffles the skeet shoot
from the fish & game. The real world
is the shadow world. People
are everywhere, watching.