Penn's Woods (On the Edge)

One of my personal favorite poems I have written, from my unpublished collection Outskirts (2009), although the poem was written earlier than the collection, circa 1997.

Penn's Woods (On the Edge)

I.

It is here

where earth meets river,

it is here where

states meet,

states end

and begin again.

This is a

landscape

of rugged, harsh beauty;

it takes ingenuity

to carve out a life here:

quaint dwellings

built into solid limestone rock face,

or suspended on pillars of steel, over-

hanging the

riverbank's perilous edge.

Here's hoping that the river

doesn't have a bad-hair day,

like on one boisterous evening

back in '55,

when the river and his canal wench

had a little too much to drink.

A pissing contest ensued,

which flooded the shore road over

four feet deep.

A witness to these urological feats

spray-painted on a rock wall--

testimonial

to the fact

that remains to this day.

Moral:

what happened here once

could happen twice,

again.

But events such as these

are easily forgotten

when pushed back into

the realm

of the subconscious,

for between the river's bouts of

binge drinking

and his sudden fits of

manic-depression,

a life is lived out

and you call it "good."

II.

Brave souls

walk dogs

along the canal path.

From the shore road,

with river on their one side

and canal on the other,

man and beast

give the appearance of

walking on water,

or of ol' man Moses

parting the Sea of Reeds.

But no reeds grow here.

Just the gnarled, twiggy,

branchy stuff

of small, isolated islands

that speckle these waters

like some dappled thing

out of Hopkins;

it is these landmarks

that give the river

and its people

a sense of character,

that lend an eerie air of mystery:

a small, not-so-old, yellow car

washes up on one of these

flotsam shores--

how did it get there?

Where did it come from?

And where is its owner?

Was his dreams dashed upon the shore

of harsh reality,

his life washed up

like that river?

Perspective: what if one were to stand on an island and look back at the shore road? What would he or she see? Would they see what the river sees? And what would that be, exactly? What would be heard? The rustling of the wind through the soon barren trees on a cold, crisp autumn day? The hooting of an owl, the splash! of a playful shad whose ecstasy of existence drives it out of its watery encasement? What would it be like to have a shad's-eye view? And what would be felt? Loneliness? Isolation? The Abomination of Desolation? Like a Charon ferry on your own personal Styx? (But this ferry doesn't ferry. No. It remains inert, transfixed.) Aptly named "Devil's Half Acre," for here you're over the edge, in limbo between two realms-- dead to both, but beyond their scope of existence. You are: Nirvana to each, a Bodhisattva to neither, the true Alpha and Omega.

Lonely soldier in

no-man's land,

welcome!

to the east coast edition of

The Waste Land.

Did Washington stand

where you stand?

Did he get out and

relieve himself

on this hydro-

suspended

shore?

Imagine that.

No. Imagine more.

III.

The towns,

legends in their own right.

Each a living, breathing book

with an intriguing title:

...Upper Black Eddy

Ulherstown

Erwinna

Tinicum

Point Pleasant

Lumberville

Devil's Half Acre

Cream Ridge

New Hope

Washington Crossing...

all unique,

all with a story to tell;

short stories

in an anthology

called Bucks County,

itself a small volume

on the geological

shelf

of a library known as

Pennsylvania.

The towns--

cozy and quiet,

inviting.

Like Tolkien's Hobbiton,

Bree-like;

one almost imagines

to speak to a Took

or to a Baggins,

or spot a Gandolfan

on Main Street.

Over in New Hope,

budding artists

enter studios

to perform their own

little blend of alchemy;

industrious inside

their Isengards,

safe.

For there is no

Mordor here,

only Shire.

And only the Omnipresent

River Running,

winding,

loved,

hated,

feared,

respected,

remembered,

forgotten,

(but never for long)

giving life,

taking life

and,

for these inhabitants,

life itself.