Deconstructing New England

Toss in some wavy lines, an equal sign, and a squiggle,

then a lilac log, boulders with faces, a few phrases

like rock walls, twin marks from wagon wheels on granite.

The tell-tale lilacs give away the cellar hole:

magnetic lilacs, like nineteenth-century girls

in pinafores and blossom sprays, stationed

beside their no-longer houses. They look about to sing.

Banana curls. Purple ribbons tying their waists.

And boulders in the woods act as billboards

interrupted by an enormous Mont Blanc fountain pen, lounging

like an alligator. It intrudes. Comes out of my present

time. No. Be less. It's a Bic ballpoint. Bleached by deletion,

"By the middle of the nineteenth century, when de

forestation reached its peak, more than half

of New England's native forests"—according to Robert M. Thorson,

Stone by Stone—"as much as 80 percent in the heavily settled

parts of southern New England—had been cut down,"

"replaced with 'open space,'" the autumn foliage

is paint-by-number and different tabs throughout

are half-finished murals

of a single type of tree in a single time of year.

Here's the place where someone w/ a pewter spoon kneeled

to plant the Lady's Slippers that still appear,

and the mushrooms like a stack of dinner plates

that run up the side of a rotting tree.

Here's the fallen-in deer stand

and the apple tree among maples making fruit for deer.

Outside the woods, the puff of dust on the road

where the school bus used to stop.

Outside is the failure to stay in touch

or, really, to ever be in touch. I didn't

ever know them (my neighbors) well.

In winter you are handed a white tray

with a few tiny rock walls, short lines drawn with a ruler,

an indent for where a cellar hole could be

a hyperlink to once go once more to the lake

and told to go at it, go play.

Source: Control Bird Alt Delete (University of Iowa Press, 2014)