Five Poems by Tom Laughlin

 

Finding Woodrow in the Walker Museum Sculpture Gardens, Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

In the 1970s I made horses out of real mud and sticks.  They were in part

meant to reflect how much a horse is part of his environment.  I combine

the figure and the ground. 

--Deborah Butterfield

Notes on her bronze sculpture entitled Woodrow, 1988

 

His dreams are always blue

a light powder blue

since bronzing

yet he longs for wood

and supple green bending of limbs

running through fields, forests, rivers

 

The distant drone of traffic

through his ribs

grows louder as his eyes reach across the bridge

to a small pond edged with grass

a duck sails downward

                        lands slowly

ripples    splashes

the house on the pond’s edge stands silent

brown roof dripping in the cold rain

 

Within the pond

a smaller island sits

brown and parched from winter

but on the opposite bank

grass is blowing green now

teasing his nostrils

in this April rain

 

His legs are planted firmly

he feels the soft mud

hooves reaching deeper every day

and he knows he will go no further

the dreams return now

a light powder blue mist

yet this time

tinged here and there

with memories of green

 

In the Woods                                                                        

            for Ryan

 

I.

Granite huddles in masses

trips over itself

gets away down embankments

to pile upward

in a height competition

gray dark stones numbered on stone

the gods’ forgotten child’s play                                             

left to punctuate                                               

these New England woodlands

collect flecks of moss, sparrows’ nests

and contemplative hikers

 

II.

Green in winter, they wave their tops

to this January sun

smile

their glazed eyes rolling gently

dopey and defiant like this warm brightness                         

against a creaking mid-winter frost

inviting chickadees who answer

in staccato riddles

 

III.                                                                             

An uncontrollable smile runs

bouncing pine-needled path

brushing green hair softly

beneath breezy fingers                      

sap-oozing knot holes

sunlight slanting through

to chasing squirrels flitting birds

above and between

camouflaged branches

mossy stones to the left

and more of this path

yes more

                       

IV.                              

Walking tree-filled hills        

the oak, pine and birch step aside

leading you forward along winding trails                 

rhythmed feet feel stones, feel earth

steady and flat for a half mile

then slow with steep 

here thick with shady hemlock

here oak-flecked sun on boulders calling for a climb

red checkerberries

small blue flowers hugging wrinkled roots

puffed white stalks and seeds blown thick like snow

and the trail reaching upward again toward short scrub and granite tops

which offer a wide-open sky

green hills speckled with ponds

and hawks circling, floating on warming currents

 

I am a long way away
                                      after a photo by Albert Desrochers

 

yet I feel the brush-cut field

of my youth, the stretch

of open space reaching far ahead

beyond the big rock – Plymouth Rock

we called it, and it might have been

in those hazy marshlands of our

third grade social studies reader

(perhaps the ocean had spread here

before inland birches, maple, and spruce

narrowed the view of our sky).

 

Stepping past this boulder, midfield

with swishing high grass whispering

at pantlegs, was beyond

ourselves, beyond backyards

beyond dinner bells and cut-through paths.

 

This warm-shouldered day I feel the rock

with memoried eyes, anxious still

at this child-cast line in the grass

wavering with a wind's gentle urging

toward fall-colored, pathless woods.

 

An oak has drifted across my nostrils

and I almost touch feathered clouds.

I move forward now

with this rock.

 

You, Ocean,

 

you fat child on a swing set,

watch thickened rivers empty into you,

iron legs stretch into your bulk,

tankers spit at your froth.

 

You splash at granite,

sweep pebbled beaches

while rusted barrels tear at your belly.

 

So you tip the occasional summer home

in Key West or Malibu—

you, ocean,

where are your narwhal?

where the sucking whirlpools of your wrath?

 

Wood Originally

 

All xylophones were wood,

And Egyptian pillows.

Originally everything was made of wood.

Stoves were maple wood,

Blankets were sandalwood,

Cows were made of oak,

Roads were paved with solid pine,

Vegetables were wooden, water

Was mostly beech wood,

People were made of wood—

Small children were particularly brittle,

Horses, and dogs and cats,

Poems— all wood.

No, things aren't like

what they used to be, originally.

 

Tom Laughlin is a professor and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Middlesex Community College.  He was a founding editor of Vortext, a literary journal of Massasoit Community College, a volunteer staff reader for many years for Ploughshares, and he has taught literature classes in two Massachusetts prisons. His poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Ibbetson Street, Drunk Monkeys, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Blue Mountain Review, Superpresent Magazine, Molecule, and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, The Rest of the Way, was released by Finishing Line Press in August 2022.  His website is www.TomLaughlinPoet.com<http://www.TomLaughlinPoet.com>