From WTP Vol. VI #1

Driving to Petersham
By Michael Thurston

1.
Around the Quabbin,
marsh ponds stare at clouds
like the eyes of the drowned
watch hulls going over.

2.
Let’s say the dry stalks scrape
the eye and prop
the lid of the descending sky.

3.
The first car pins the squirrel
so that the second can peel it
like a damp work glove
from a sweaty hand.

4.
History: the dark hands buried
in every old stone wall.

5.
Cold stones mock
assumptions of control.

6.
Of course ghosts appear before
they fade into the warp
of bare branches, the weft of vines,
these thickets near the Hardwick mills.

7.
Loosed from their moorings, leaves
arise and go, like skeins
of blackbirds leaving trees as one,
tangling and unraveling in the dusk,
not falling but flying.

Michael Thurston lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. He has published work in a number of magazines, from Apt to Quick Fiction, Southeast Review to Driftwood Press.