A Perfect Spiral

Along the boundary the forest
looms like Easter Island god-heads.

A hemlock seared by lightning displays
a perfect spiral burned in the trunk,

a scar at least eighty feet long.
Another, much older tree has died

and become as soft as politics
but stands aloof none the less.

I want to feel as small as I can
so nature will overlook me.

Yesterday a grasshopper fastened
on my finger and tried to eat it,

scraping away dead skin cells,
unaware it was devouring

a creature ten thousand times its bulk.
I lack so vivid an appetite

and prefer to starve instead
of so glibly engaging the world.

"Sell yourself," my high-school counselor
advised "Sell yourself and someone

will buy." But the stony
post glacial New England hills resist

such plaintive transactions,
and so do I. Perhaps if I lived

on Easter Island among those tall
stone heads--long-jawed, lugubrious--

I'd have a more elemental sense
of culture. Lacking that, I press

both hands to the lightning scar
and feel the rustle of hemlock

assert a vegetable survival.
No Rosetta Stone's available

to help me transliterate
vegetable to animal worlds,

resolving all biology;
but Wordsworth with his lean gray stride

and Darwin with his pointed beard
and Marx with British Museum-breath

whisper behind my back so faintly
I'll never know if they've lied.

"Our Best Axe"

Somewhere along a gravel road
in half-logged hardwood forest
I pull into a turnout and park.
An axe lies in the rubble

of stripped limbs and sawdust.
Brand new, labeled "Our Best Axe,"
it's sharp enough to split hairs
with Socrates. I drive away

with the axe in the bed of my truck.
By the time I arrive in town
visions have engulfed me. Brains
dissected to expose the wiring,

trees waving human arms to halt
the rage of loggers, bedrock
creamed with blood cooked in the sun.
I park downtown and heft the axe,

step into the diner and face
Pete the gun-crazed local beard,
whose hunting exploits have sickened me
for years. The axe of its own accord

swings and shaves off his whiskers,
leaving the face perfectly naked
and ashamed. His friends gasp and laugh
and I sit in a booth and demand

eggs over easy, the waitress
star-struck as she jots my order.
Now our evil congressman enters.
He voted to halt the subsidy

of heating oil for needy elders,
then when the bill passed anyway
demanded more than our state's fair share.
The axe gestures and his clothes split

and he's suddenly so naked
the cops at the end of the counter
arrest him for failure to blush.
Now everyone looks at me with fear,

so I lower my gaze to my eggs
and eat, the axe propped beside me.
When I step outside, the massive
light of autumn slopes over me,

and I heft the axe and shake it
at the great creation, warning
the hills and sky and village
how trivial vengeance can be.

Copyright © 2001 William Doreski