Michael Diehl, Cedar Creek Grist Mill
“Once the farmhouse”
He’s preoccupied, watching a beetle,
Its dark hard shell protecting it,
Watching it not knowing if the wind
Has stopped or getting ready to blow trees down.
He is the rider parked under an oak
Canteen empty, gas gauge low.
He will ride another hundred miles
Once the farmhouse, white-painted,
Gives him gasoline, a lone woman
There of faded grey eyes, tired, wan,
And he grins but cannot give love
There is no love in the world—
Whether in coming
Home or leaving to find it
On a stricken road with a stricken heart
Thinking “I will find love, will earn
Enough to merit love, to show my face.”
Yes, but still he is afraid as he rides
His Harley powerfully onto the road
Around each curve, then noiselessly
Through a cushioning forest
Of windswept trees.
_____________
Zeke Sanchez
Review by Dave Mehler
Once a poem goes out in the world it ceases to be the single artifact composed, understood and intended by the author but becomes two things: the product of the author and secondarily the product of the reader who transforms it by bringing their own individual experience and background and understanding to the reading of a piece. Hopefully the two mesh or at least intersect but they don’t necessarily have to and for the purposes of the poem it may not matter because the poem leaves the author’s hands to become something other in the reader’s. The reason I bring this up here is because this poem speaks to me so powerfully in my own experience as a long-haul trucker. I understand this is not Sanchez’ intention necessarily, but there is a layering of so much archetype here that it may not matter? Our understandings and the ultimate meaning of the poem overlap. Sanchez and his memory of coming back from the war (Viet Nam) and processing it with a road trip something reminiscent of Hemingway camping and fishing to detox in his boyhood Michigan rivers. When Zeke has lines like this:
He is the rider parked under an oak
Canteen empty, gas gauge low.
Obviously one is not to take these lines literally–or only literally.
And further this:
And he grins but cannot give love
There is no love in the world—
Whether in coming
Home or leaving to find it
On a stricken road with a stricken heart
and the speaker thinks to himself this thought:
“I will find love, will earn
Enough to merit love, to show my face.”
Once he finds love he feels he still must earn it (because nothing comes for free and he doesn’t feel worthy), all so he might show his face (which is code for opening up, letting himself be seen, allowing himself to become intimate with another). This is a man who has been damaged and carries wounds, and most especially shame. A man alone, looking for connection, restored order, in a world gone mad, stricken of love. He is a man who must remain guarded, but desires not to have to be forever. But because of undisclosed experiences and damage he feels he still must earn the right to show himself–ie. love another. He refuses the possibility with the woman at the farmhouse because he’s afraid, perhaps of love, of vulnerability, of being seen, but still hopes it might be possible, if he earns it, leaving home to seek it, despairs of finding it, but part of him still hopes, seeks? I so relate to these lines and this poem because of my experience that was entirely different which I bring to bear and I can only guess at Zeke’s memory which inspired the piece, but I feel like I totally get it, and the quest becomes universal, as he ends like this:
still he is afraid as he rides
His Harley powerfully onto the road
Around each curve, then noiselessly
Through a cushioning forest
Of windswept trees.
It’s lovely–beautiful, both words that would make the kind of men Zeke was, knew, or BH Fairchild would never use, but I will. Here’s another–sehnsucht or saudade–I can’t choose. I have felt all of this on my own version of the road. He and his machine make noise, but the forest cushions it even while it is windswept and might itself be blown down under a strong, unpredictable wind.