Boston Review — Martha Ronk: Elegy

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012

Elegy

Martha Ronk

(a photograph by Robert Adams)

Headlights light up a weed or cone of blossoms lifting off into shadows
driven by the demarcation of time.
They are forever back there as we go forward in the undifferentiated dark.

Part of the trouble is the echo of objects just past and to a lesser degree,
those about to arrive.

They fade out slowly
those conical bright shapes out from the field & across the dashboard.

He had walked into/fallen into the truck crossing the road.
Later he had fallen into the water near the pier.
Earlier he had decided or he hadn’t decided or it had shaped itself around him.

It’s hard to see the sunflowers in the dark but the dark center surrounded
by the many gray petals is immediately clear, despite shadows,
despite tricks played on the eye.

It seems more than obvious that nothing particular is about to happen.

When the painters paint the white line down the middle of the road do they see
how it shines in the near dark nearly upon us.

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echo

young woman waving an orange flag, i have three children at home she says, this is just a job to make ends meet, but let me tell you it isn't worth it, folks have been calling me names, it's not my fault i tell them, and besides, what do they want, a road that will completely wash away this spring? but people don't think except to complain.

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do they think of themselves as painters, or as members of a striping crew? is any of this even poetry? what about parking lots? what about roadside rubbish crews in prison jumpers? what about wildfires, driving through that sudden, absolute darkness, jets of water spraying, hoping to god you don't crash into a tree?

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an artist walking at dusk on a suburban road, shuffling crab-wise in a crowded gallery, approaching a window, entitled: new england shore, approaching storm-- the water is blown smooth and black, grass and sand are lidded-eyes, in the moment before they snap open, wide-- flicker-flash, traffic in a white-walled gallery, traffic behind a highway striping crew-- perhaps we prefer to think of ourselves as going, because we can't admit what's gone--

— posted 01/17/2013 at 18:24 by Tyler P. Garble


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