Tipton Poetry Journal – Fall 2020
Adirondack Chair Claire Keyes My beloved bathes in the brook, walking naked through the woods while I laze in an Adirondack chair counting white star-blossoms pushing out from raspberry bushes, slapping at black flies taking juicy nips behind my ear, listening to the vireo call over and over again. But nobody answers just the near-distant chuckle of the brook and a motorcycle churning through the valley, past farmhouses, barns, time slowed down, spreading from present to past, the way it sometimes does so that I feel again a rush of air, a helmet strange on my head. Because I’ve slung my arms around his waist, he doesn’t tell me to grab the sissy bars under the seat. Destination: north, an old quarry in Rockport, the Harley leaning into the highway’s curves no talking, just the road moving beneath the wheels, the rumble of the pipes, a man’s hands, eyes and feet taking me away. Sometimes we want to be taken away. Sometimes it’s enough to relax on a porch and listen for the hermit thrush, the winter wren, a rooster crowing.
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