Fathomless

I remember that store, and the nasty redneck whose stink

seemed a challenge to everyone in it. The scene

is decades old, but I'm still confused that no one

took up the challenge—including me, though I liked

an occasional fight back then. The prospect of pain

meant less to me once, I guess. An aneurism

had just killed my brother, so the pain I'm talking about

was my body's. I breathed up another pain that day.

I checked the man's beat pickup; why would he want them,

those skunks knee-deep in its bed? I left the lot

still more confused, my sweet retriever shivering

on the seat beside me. The godawful smell still clung

to the dog's wet coat, and my own. There'd be no more hikes

for us that morning: rain had arrived, bone-chilling.

If you killed a skunk, why would you keep the thing?

To kill some time, I stopped at The Jackpot View.

We've always called it that. Five mountaintops bled

into mists to my east in New Hampshire. The sudden squalls

spilled leaves on the woods-floor's pall of nondescript hue.

Now he was dead. Now my brother was dead.

I can't define any God, but only this morning,

I caught a whiff of road-killed skunk and thought

I could speak of Him or Her or It as surely

as I could tell you the slightest thing concerning

the man I'm remembering now, the one who shot

or trapped or clubbed those miserable reeking creatures.

The smallest enigmas we ever encounter remain

as hard to explain as all the epical ones.

I've failed for years to fathom the death of my brother;

but it's just as hard to understand why a scene

in an old Vermont store should linger like dead-skunk odor,

which if you've lately been tainted comes back to scent you

whenever a rain blows in—or like some pains

you may have thought you'd forever gotten over,

but which at some odd prompting come back to haunt you.

Source: I Was Thinking of Beauty (Four Way Books, 2013)