Dear Thomas Jefferson,
Let us start, sir, with the spindly first ten issues
of Poetry East, cracked a bit in the spine but only a buck
apiece at the dusty bookstore, sturdy enough for Nazim
Hikmet and Robert Bly and mustachioed Gregory Orr;
they adorn my Monticello, along with the tattered, stapled flyer
I scanned while celebrating my good fortune with the sweet
goop of frozen yogurt, Greek yogurt, strawberry, sir,
and gazing back at me was Patterson Hood's stapled face,
he of the Drive By Truckers, big fans of Lynyrd Skynyrd,
the sons, Mr. President, of the agrarian rabble,
and though we had to skip the show, the poster slyly grins
in my Monticello of intelligent inclusion—
okay, synaptic whimsy—right down the narrow hall
from the timber rattlesnake we saw at White Oak Canyon
an hour ago. How dark he was! And so little amused
when we pointed a camera and argued about his length,
payload and intent, my wife and I almost tender
as we chatted about her snake and mine, monogramming
the most impersonal business in this cold, cold world.
We are passing hay bales now on Highway 29. In winter
they look like Frosted Not-So-Mini Wheats. Brandy Station.
Thundering horses. Civil war. Burgers spattering brightly
on the big-ass grill at the Brandy Fire Company's
bingo. Saturday night, twenty years ago,
three before my girlfriend died, who lived here on a hog farm,
whose grave site I neglected, preferring plains like these,
the way they open graciously and distantly the mountains
rise and the sun, as in the quiet corners
of your Monticello, warms all that has been gathered.
Best,
Mark
To Jon, Who Left His Wife of 30 Years
Truth is, I haven't spoken to you
in maybe a decade, so
when I try to picture you now, alone
holed up in a motel
or someone's paneled basement
wrestling your demons,
I see someone else,
the older man this morning
at McDonald's, legs
dangling out the van
he appeared to live in,
shirtless and in shorts,
lost in a wrinkled map,
cocooned in the wet,
soft air of July
as he was, perhaps,
one morning in the Thirties,
in Idaho, let's say,
camping in the Sawtooths,
soggy beans for breakfast
if he was lucky, maybe
fish to catch for dinner,
poking at cold ashes
with a stick, disturbing
little, reading even less
of the future, owning
nothing but his dreams slowly
breaking into days.
Mark Jackley is the author of several chapbooks, most recently Every Green Word (Finishing Line Press), and a full-length collection, There Will be Silence While You Wait (Plain View Press). He lives in Sterling, VA.