3 Poems

Camping at Hartman Creek
      (for “a table for twenty-seven”)

Chores over, struck
by a quick chorus of uproarious voices
like axes echoing off oak,
he remembers back toward Waupaca,

the corner of County Highways Q and QQ,
how sometimes language must be mute
in order to be exact
instead of accidentally cute.

Glistening now in dappled shade,
for once he’s free to cease to hear,
sees his way clear to seize the obvious:

a wine cooler whistling in the wind…
a farmer’s match flicked
careening mid-air
like a grasshopper sprung from the thicket.

He’s quiet for the moment
and for the moment cautious,
far from house yet near to home
as the site itself.

What if he had known
to remain here might mean
the promise of a life’s work?

Sunday Morning Run

Such fine light snow
like flour on dough
so that glancing back
at a dark track
enlivens the stride
as if to hide
the fact
of fat,
to appear
to be here
for fun,
communion
of one
with nature—albeit one’s own.

Mile out of town,
a left, another, then down
the usual street
by luck to meet
the paperboy on his Schwinn,
follow its trail so thin—
like a hair without end
under a lens—here a bend,
later a slit
in it,
taking on a turn,
looping in driveways to earn
delight
in its rhythm as might
a hymn
to Him
in heaven
or him in heaven
here, his presence certain,
seen in impressions so clearly human
as to be read
the rival of daily bread.

The Nincompoop
      (a bedtime story for Seth & Owen)

In a place called Land
not far from here
there was a band
with a man
who played bass fiddle.
He stood in the middle
(of the band, that is).

Now all the people
thought this man a fool.
You see, he had a stool
he sat on while he played,
but stood whenever he could—
between songs
or during someone’s solo.

O how the band
paid for the man’s mistakes!
Even the town’s longest frown,
that of the ugliest woman around,
undertaker by trade,
would fade.

That made the deaf take notice.
As for the blind,
as schooled
as anyone in the cruel,
they could not help themselves:
laughter became the rule.

The mayor, cracked jewel of a man,
could no longer command
the attention of Land
nor—since he served as conductor—
the band.

May you always occasionally crave
such a stir of musical soup,
the spoon none other than
a nincompoop.

Karl Elder teaches Creative Writing at Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.