“I’m sixty-eight” he said,
“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that’s just what
I’ve gone and done.”
-Gary Snyder
FIELD NOTES #34
The dark circles under your eyes
sweep across your cheeks like craters,
the long years pooling in the hollow dip,
the way rainwater fills an empty pothole.
As a child, we’d sit by the fire
and you would recite the stories
your father told you—I barely listened
all I saw were the shadows
dancing along your cheekbones
and how the firelight faltered
in the round of your vacant eyes.
Looking in the mirror I see
the same shadows under mine—the long years
you passed down, the dying fire’s light.
It takes a splash of cold water
to will them away, to see clearly,
let the light in, and survive another day.