Bactrians
under the overpass
cut the view with double humps,
like mini-dunes or mountaintops
that cross the flats and slate-blue sky.
Watered here in daily rain,
far from desert sun and sage,
salt-pans, dunes and heat-borne flies,
needlegrass and Gobi shrubs,
they rest on knees and arch their necks,
oblivious to highway trucks
that hurtle down the overpass.
They deign to graze the plain Dutch grass.
Published 2014. It works because its single surreal image is offered so naturally. Presumably the poet actually saw this scene, but if not she makes us believe she did. The formal structure and the rhymes in the last stanza make it feel almost like nonsense verse in the great English tradition.
cut the view with double humps,
like mini-dunes or mountaintops
that cross the flats and slate-blue sky.
Watered here in daily rain,
far from desert sun and sage,
salt-pans, dunes and heat-borne flies,
needlegrass and Gobi shrubs,
they rest on knees and arch their necks,
oblivious to highway trucks
that hurtle down the overpass.
They deign to graze the plain Dutch grass.
Published 2014. It works because its single surreal image is offered so naturally. Presumably the poet actually saw this scene, but if not she makes us believe she did. The formal structure and the rhymes in the last stanza make it feel almost like nonsense verse in the great English tradition.
No comments:
Post a Comment