![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walterbargen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/watercover.jpg\" "\\"watercover\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Timberline Press, 122 pages, 2003
\n$20.00 (Illustrated by Mike Sleadd)<\/p>\n
Selections:<\/p>\n
HOUSE OF TURTLE<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n I can’t tell you where to start, maybe I don’t know, mirror another driver intentionally swerve. We must for a new apartment complex, the backhoe with its the quitting-time traffic no longer able to dodge just a warning, like the children standing in a down- <\/p>\n The engine is insistent, hungry, demanding to be fed more miles. without a stop sign, light neatly folded the clapboard houses and swivel their awkward wings low over the gravel shoulders with what he had, which was all the known world, it wouldn’t matter but relived in the small plastic-flowered crosses by an overpass. are honed on yellow shafts of afternoon, and in the turbulent wakes of the scars of exposure, drilling and dynamite, and begin to glow in the full- have to navigate. You do not have to live.” On this road that we desperately want <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Timberline Press, 122 pages, 2003 $20.00 (Illustrated by Mike Sleadd) Selections: HOUSE OF TURTLE I can’t tell you where to start, maybe I don’t know, or maybe I’m simply not ready for the responsibility, though it has nothing to do Continue reading The Body of Water<\/span>
\nor maybe I’m simply not ready for the responsibility,
\nthough it has nothing to do with not wanting to help,
\nnothing to do with all the possible guilts that sweep
\n<\/span>
\nover us for not having loved enough, or been present
\nenough, or even not having stopped the car and moved
\nthe turtle off the road, and finding the flattened mess
\nwhen we returned, having watched in the rearview<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntake into account another time it was hopeless,
\nor just pointless, when we had not yet surrendered
\nhope, when the pond by the highway was drained<\/p>\n
\nclaw sunk for the night into the breached embankment,
\nwaiting for morning to again swallow another mouthful
\nof earth and spit it out. What more could be done,<\/p>\n
\nthose orphaned by the air, who crawled for other waters,
\nand over the asphalt the hundred or so moss-backed
\nshells were cracked and savaged flat. Perhaps this is<\/p>\n
\npour shouting over whether running or walking
\nthrough the rain will leave them drier, even as the rain
\nfalls harder, drenching their most refined arguments.<\/p>\n
\nHIGHWAY FIFTY WEST<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe windows rolled down, the long zipper of September locust
\nsong is undone and falls into the rags of distance. In the last town<\/span><\/p>\n
\ninto the envelope of long shadows. Even vultures are hungry
\nfor the road, following it more closely than drivers, they tilt<\/p>\n
\nfor what has left a humped stain. The Roman Emperor Nero commanded
\nSeneca to suicide, perhaps for telling him that if he wasn\u2019t happy<\/p>\n
\nif he possessed even an unknown empire. But then history’s fatal
\ncollisions are not the same and will not be remembered on this road,<\/p>\n
\nThe scarlet rash of sumacs bleed up hillsides. The sharp blue edge
\nof horizon cuts above soybean fields. In the drainage ditch cattail blades<\/p>\n
\npassing traffic can be heard the clatter of ancient duels, frog and snake
\nfattening for hibernation. The bald monuments of road-cut rock display<\/p>\n
\nface of late sun. On a tarnished plaque below a statue of Columbus in a square
\nin Barcelona, on a similar sunny fall day, can be read the inscription: \u201cYou<\/p>\n
\nto disobey\u2014it makes no difference if we suddenly wrench the steering,
\nswerve, hit or miss, we crash through the bronzed light of evening.<\/p>\n