The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by David Salner
The Royal, the Whiskey, the Snow
I’d been drinking and punching keys on my Royal clackey-clack, while snow was falling on hedges and hoods, making even the trash in the cans look beautiful outside the shack I lived in. And that was years ago. All sound was muffled but the crunch of tires compacting snow, and the ding of the carriage return. Earlier, I’d cleaned the keys with a safety pin, prying the blue-black clots from the bellies of the b’s and o’s. And that was years ago. I got up to shovel so that the next morning when most of the valley was still asleep I could enter the great cold stillness and drive to the power plant, where the wind shrieked around towers and stacks. And that was years ago. When I came back to my shot glass from shoveling steps and salting the path, the windows were coated with a haze of breath frozen from head to sash—wondering, is this the last poem I’ll write? And that was years ago, long before Dell and Microsoft. I was happy and desolate and treasured the feeling I was alone in the world and destined for nothing but that present tense of bourbon and snow, very soon to change. And that was years ago. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |