Monadnock from Gap Mountain

Along the Monadnock Watch

Moonglow casts deep down to the dark spine and flank of this ancient
whale of rock. And here beached along side, by the edge of a marsh
stream, like a salt, like a last almost Roman outpost, stands a well
guarding the pine and brush while mist unveils its ancient tapestry.

Soon a giant form thrashes itself clear of water;
a moose, rack erect, plods toward the well
and pauses. Steam rises from his back.
He slowly swivels, wattle winging like a bell
and sniffs up toward the granite peak
that once sheltered wolf until these
near-sighted, almost Latin tillers ringed the stone
with flame and burned the green to ash.
The moose listens as those night legends sing,
then ignores the granite blocks, returns to the water
and sloshes off toward great lodges of pine.

II

Later, as the moon guards its lower track,
the moose is nailed on Highway 12, four limbs
shattered by the chrome of another dreamer.
An officer kneels by its side, strokes its dark fur.
The moose breathes deep; each slow release
a soft cloud masking this top-ten hit.
All out of place here: the flash of red and blue,
low crackle of voice, square box of rescue truck.

But there on the mountain framed under stars,
a gray wolf floats up the shoe-worn rock
and turns to stare down at the tiny, colored strobes
gathered along the pencil line he cannot cross.
It sifts its head, then crouches low
and lifts his snout to heaven. The howl descends
into the ears of the valley. The moose awakens;
his clean, dark eyes meet the officer's. Natives awaken
and listen to owl echo wolf echo loon. The bull
imagines his antlers rising from a cold lake
while lillies cascade from his rack and he bellows.

The officer points his pistol and brings the hammer down.

Rodger Martin
Lungfish Review
 

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Tea

A child once dreamed his life complete
when he could sit like his grandfather,
in velvet robe, sipping cosied tea,
and gaze at mist spun in from the sea.

This early March that child’s daughter sleeps
And he sits hushed by velvet within
the smooth-grained polish of a captain’s chair.
Through greenhouse glass at dusts of snow he stares
and sips between the rising twists of steam his tea.


He listens to this gentle house where dream matures to prayer:
"Where from here Grandad? Then I was too young
to question beneath your calm. Then, enough
was to sense peace outlasted your children’s
consumed lungs and cancered breasts.

Then, you understood the orphan,
my brother’s ‘Dance on your grave’ scream.
He knew only the triangle-- earth, anger, and pain.
Later, in your garden centered by scent,
your dirt, under your thatch, I learned what survival meant.

And now my age sifts itself to a nuzzle of fur.
It seeps like leaves of tea that swell and steep
through clear, hot, liquid life infusing a soul with color.
I am your cup, bone-china thin but no rust,
no scald, no tremor will rim my thrust."

    "Then rise," he said. "Measure your finest leaf
    Into silver spoon and best porcelin cup.
    It’s time to prepare great-granddaughter tea."

Rodger Martin

The Monadnock Reader

The Blue Moon Series

www.hobblebush.com

          Crotched Knob

Rodger Martin
12-8-08 
NHSCA Poet Laureate Website, Fall 2006

www.hobblebush.com

Harpers Ferry

 
Its striated slate foundations squeeze themselves flat
like pages of a national Bible ­- the book,
layer upon layer locked in shale stacked from shoal
to ridge top, is the story of ourselves lit by the fire
of gas lamps and determined by the push of the waters,
as much needed, to tame a continent, as desire.  

Rodger Martin
12-9-09
from The Battlefield Guide