Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 6, No 1: CLRI Feb 2019
Glen Sorestad
Erasing History
Is this not where the farm of our youth stood?
Nothing here but canola field, right to the road.
Where are the fences, the gateway to the farm,
the garden, the rhubarb patch, the caragana hedges?
What happened to the barn Grandfather built of logs?
The sheds, the small wood frame house, the aspens
that sheltered us from bitter northwest winds?
Where have they gone? How can a ten-foot deep
farm dug-out disappear, as if it never existed,
as if it watered no cows, raised no ducks or geese?
A single farm, a thousand stories, grown fainter
and fainter until stories and tellers are lost.
A blooming field of canola, a dazzle of yellow
beneath cyan sky, wind to tally gains or losses.
Overnight Snow
To be human is to be curious.
We want to know.
We step from the house,
a morning after overnight snow
and the first animal tracks
bring us up short.
Who does not want to read
messages left in snow
that has created this white world,
a vast page upon which
little dramas have left their traces?
Something primal, atavistic,
clings and lingers within,
a desire to understand,
to seek answers, whether we are
part of the urban majority,
or the few who still live
close to nature. Who or what
made these tracks?
Rabbit? Coyote? Red fox?
We want to know.
If we have lived in the countryside,
even a small portion of our lives,
we still recognize
most of the animal tracks we see.
We see a fresh message that says,
Jack rabbit, going fast.
Must have been spooked.
Look at those strides!
Reading the spoor satisfies
an inherited need,
our ancestors peering intently
over our shoulders at these
early morning snow graphics.
out on the Pier
The ominous park sign makes us watch the shoreline water
for knobby eyes breaking the surface from the reedy lake,
a lurking shape in the murk below the dock’s walkway.
The day is blustery, raw. Surely no self-respecting gator
will be hanging around – even if this is Florida. Winter
is still winter. We are intent on human figures hunched
at the end of the small pier alongside the boat ramp.
Manatee State Park appears otherwise deserted.
A man and his wife are fishing. Are they catching anything
more than the brow-beating gusts, driving them deeper
into their winter hoodies? We bend into the icy breeze,
drawn to the lure of human conversation and warmth.
The World We Live In
A woman goes out to a bar
for a few drinks with friends.
She has a very fine time,
but she never makes it home.
She has become data –
a missing person file.
A teary high school freshie
asks the principal for help
opening his new locker.
The principal stops what he
is doing, goes to unlock
the freshie’s locker.
A man kneels on the ground,
hands bound behind him,
moments before a terrorist
sword decapitates him
in the name of some ism.
A fire truck arrives at
an elderly woman’s home;
a fireman climbs the ladder
to rescue a frightened kitten
from its lofty tree perch,
returns it to its owner.