The Shadow Waters

The Divide

after Donald Hall


Deep in a ravine in western Oregon
the old Caterpillar lodges between two firs
thick as ancient pillars. In nineteen eighty-eight
the solitary logger – a one-man crew –
steered it here, muscles clenched for the descent.
In the cab, the yellow hardhat tilts forward over the face
as if the young man were sleeping, only the teeth
and brown bone of his jaw exposed, his heavy gray
shirt and black pants deflated. The arms hang,
fingers like dried reeds pointing to the earth.

Or say the ridge hadn’t buckled beneath me.
I rounded the cutback and rumbled down
the long fire road to my truck, drove the eight miles home
and graduated from college that next spring.
Every morning now I curve along the Pacific Coast Highway,
the rocky cliff falling to ocean only a few feet away,
my black polo and gray slacks loose, and I slouch, tired,
for the long drive to my office, one pale hand on the wheel,
the other on my knee, harness holding me for dear life
to this seat in a car on a road over an endless faultline.

posted by the shadow waters @ 5:10 PM