DRIVING VI
After Will Ackerman
Keizer to Silverton
Crunchy leaves dash across the road
Apple orchards exhale on either side.
Hazelgreen Road
EZ Orchards warm cider doughnuts in a white bag
Pavement dips down
Into the cut of the Little Pudding River
Chill light to broken shadows and light again.
Farmland, bare, readying for November.
Smoke from burn piles
The scent of autumn, it’s essence,
Think in the air
The sun already distant in the sky,
The ground preparing for sleep
And me not far away.
_______________
Marc Janssen
Review by Jared Pearce
While I don’t disagree that the poem’s modeled on Ackerman, it also reads to me that it’s coming after Frost. Something similar happens in “Silverton Reservoir” as well, with the “Dark and deep” line. I don’t hold this against Janssen—I rather like it because it reveals how poems continue to talk with us, arranging and rearranging their stories for us.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Centering. Cantering. This poem has the beneficial effect of an exhale during a breathing exercise. We are well past halfway, of another round, another orbit, another cycle, another commute, another song. There is calm and lucidity in this poem, acknowledgement and precision.