"The cure for loneliness is solitude."
—Marianne MooreHopper never painted this, but here
on a snaky path his vision lingers:three white tombs, robots with glassed-in faces
and meters for eyes, grim mouths, flat noses,lean forward on a platform, like strangers
with identical frowns scanning a blur,far off, that might be their train.
Gas tanks broken for decades face Parson'ssmithy, planked shut now. Both relics must stay.
The pumps have roots in gas pools, and the smithystores memories of hammers forging scythes
to cut spartina grass for dry salt hay.The tanks have the remove of local clammers
who sink buckets and stand, never in pairs,but one and one and one, blank-eyed, alone,
more serene than lonely. Today a womanrakes in the shallows, then bends to receive
last rays in shimmering water, her long shadowknifing the bay. She slides into her truck
to watch the sky flame over sand flats, a hawk'swind arabesque, an island risen, brown
Atlantis, at low tide; she probes the shorelineand beyond grassy dunes for where the land
might slope off into night. Hers is no commonemptiness, but a vaster silence filled
with terns' cries, an abundant solitude.Nearby, the three dry gas pumps, worn
survivors of clam-digging generations,are luminous, and have an exile's grandeur
that says: In perfect solitude, there's fire.One day I approached the vessels
and wanted to drive on, the road ablazewith dogwood in full bloom, but the contraptions
outdazzled the road's white, even outshonea bleached shirt flapping alone
on a laundry line, arms pointed down.High noon. Three urns, ironic in their outcast
dignity—as though, like some pine chests,they might be prized in disuse—cast rays,
spun leaf—covered numbers, clanked, then wheezedand stopped again. Shadows cut the road
before I drove off into the dark woods.
YOU ARE READING
A Random Poem Book
PoetryRead The Title You can message me a poem you want in here or a poem you made.