Page 79 - Vol. VI #1

Driving to Petersham
1.
Around the Quabbin,
marsh ponds stare at clouds like the eyes of the drowned watch hulls going over.
2.
Let’s say the dry stalks scrape the eye and prop
the lid of the descending sky.
3.
The first car pins the squirrel so that the second can peel it like a damp work glove
from a sweaty hand.
4.
History: the dark hands buried in every old stone wall.
5.
Cold stones mock assumptions of control.
6.
Of course ghosts appear before
they fade into the warp
of bare branches, the weft of vines, these thickets near the Hardwick mills.
7.
Loosed from their moorings, leaves arise and go, like skeins
of blackbirds leaving trees as one, tangling and unraveling in the dusk, not falling but flying.
Thurston lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. He has published work in a number of magazines, from Apt to Quick Fiction, Southeast Review to Driftwood Press.
70