Poetry: Selections from Mark Belair

Field Truck

An old, scuffed pickup truck

sits sunk in the corner of a cornfield;

a workhorse, clearly, in its day, overhauled

many times, so made of spare parts, so

itself but not: a beautiful relic

that could have been sold, or

at least respectfully retired

by the barn on blocks, but instead

stays field-stuck as if forgotten

by the farm family, become, for them,

an overgrown memory that won’t start up,

though it will someday for the children

who now play in its forbidden interior,

pretend-driving it, picking up other kids,

speeding, braking hard, and swerving,

the sunken truck risen—

from neglect and disobedience—

to a second, memorable life.

Fish

First a trout,

snacking on surface insects,

 

goes crazy in the water

in a way other trout might

 

behold with dread, then

leaps out of the water,

 

never to splash

back in.

 

Wise in the ways

of rapids, pools, and currents—still,

 

no creature can know

what no creature can know.

 

*

 

The silver river

breaches

 

the earth

like a glittering fish

 

rising

to feel the setting sun

 

warm

the long stretch of its back,

 

to feel the strangeness

of ranging

 

into an airy place

it knows it would die in over time.

 

This flowing yet

unmoving

 

fish who can afford

to frolic with fatality,

 

its brilliant journey

ever commencing, ever continuing, ever

 

consummating

in its ocean home.

downbeats

 

piled in the cool of a dark closet / for decades / my teenage dreams of jazz drumming / remained preserved / inside downbeat magazines

 

culling mementos in later life / i took the magazines out and / thinking they might interest a collector / started to sequence them / from 1965 to 1970 / the last issue dated the august before i left home / to study jazz drumming in boston

 

but soon the work slowed / for i found that each cover / was one i remembered / and as i worked through the stack / of nearly two hundred / i came to see / gradually / the essence of the teenager i was / not as myself looking back / but as a stranger looking on

 

looking on to this teen / practicing alone in his basement / for hours / his focus intense / exclusive / forbidding

 

to this teen drumming along with jazz records / his head hung low to listen for musical statements he could engage / statements exalted / lyric / unexpected / yet unsurprising / statements / above all / authentic

 

to this teen living / through the edgy existentialism of improvisation / in the multifariousness jazz offered / so living in revelations / born from beyond his confined experience

 

to this teen needing / by way of jazz drumming / to come to know himself / to be saved

 

then this teen / to my shock / raised his head as he played / and looked me in the eyes

 

and i saw that he saw / in his level / demanding / gaze / exactly what / through my lifelong / multifarious / drumming career / i had made of him

 

and saw that he saw / to my unexpected salvation / no stranger

Smoke

 

The fire started

in an abandoned building

beside an old stone church.

 

The building collapsed,

and the church, behind its graceful

facade and steeple, stood

gutted out.

 

Plumes of smoke

rose from the rubble

and wafted into the open-sky space

where the congregation once prayed.

 

The fire chief, overheard, judged

restoration unlikely, then warned

the gathering, stricken parishioners

to move along, for smoke

from such old buildings

could damage their lungs.

 

Smoke

that, drifting out

melted stained-glass windows,

permeated the parish area.

 

Smoke

the disbelieving believers—

straining the borders

of the cordoned-off area—

inhaled for hours, already sick.

The Fragile Goblet

 

I rubbed a smudge off a wineglass.

It snapped to pieces.

 

Which resurrected

a buried feeling.

 

The goblet about the size

of a human heart.

 

As for the goblet, I simply

got another.

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Harvard Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. He is the author of seven collections of poems and two works of fiction: Stonehaven (Turning Point, 2020) and its sequel, Edgewood (Turning Point, 2022). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as for a Best of the Net Award.