The Downstairs Press

Poetry

scrut

Holy Cow! Press • Duluth, MN • 1983
www.holycowpress.org

Early in my teaching life, (North Community High School 1970-2001), I began to see myself in my students, to notice their lives, though in inflection very different from my adolescent years, were in a deeper sense quite similar to mine.  The vicissitudes and passages of adolescence interested me.  By observing my students, I discovered an avenue into my own past life as a confused and hopeful teenager.  The arc of poems in scrut extend from 9th through 12th grade and attempt to expose what learning, growing into oneself,  “feels like” to someone not particularly self-reflective, but becoming moreso.

POETRY

when there is a moon
clear sky of stars
and new snow covers the ground
i get into the old green chevy
and drive out into the country
to be lost

i close one eye
to gauge the moon’s pitch
turn off the lights
and swell with the landscape
leaping round me

i drive into the snowy woods
of my imagination
wearing the cold like a new skin

the memory of maps disappears
and i sense the perfection
of the hunted animal

every silence in the world
settles onto my tongue