like the inseparable coming to and escaping
cities at night…
“The Quabbin Reservoir covers almost 40 square miles, and has more than 100 miles of shoreline. It was built in the late 1920’s to provide water for the eastern part of Massachusetts. Five towns in the Swift River Valley were seized and razed to make the project possible.” –Mary Smith, “Birding the Quabbin”
1. The Metal Legs
Your fingers skate a smooth camber
up the model iron thigh you paid for,
that faded bottle-gloss and particular fit.
You felt somebody’s eyes casing
your trousered legs aloft
in dismount of your bicycle at the end
of your sixtieth mile when fourteen
and until recently a child
A smart man
is alone in a humid room with wallpaper and a thick maroon carpet:
the walls are ordered ledges of literature, growing and revising daily—
some antique, others wetly inked and new from a spectral press.
The books tell him whatever he needs to know—all else, he can guess.