Logging in Nesting Season
William Doreski Even in stolid morning rain the scream of a chipper persists. Loggers devour the forest despite the protests of phoebes and wood thrush. Their songs penetrate like wounds you scored half a lifetime ago although you sleep right through the clamor, your face pressed into the pillow. I should wake and trouble you over the outrage of logging in nesting season, but rain-smells dull me into shades of gray I otherwise wouldn’t inhabit. The lake puckers as if coughing up thousands of fish. A lone canoe prowls along the shoreline, probing for bass in the misty shallows. The prattle of a chainsaw drops another big tree. The chipper gnarls the limbs while a winch hoists the trunk onto a skidder. Whoever nested in that tree mourns the loss of effort and eggs, maybe the death of nestlings. You can’t sleep this away. The ill music skids across the lake to fester in the cusp of the ear. You’d better get up and share the overall aura of complaint. The day progresses step by step as if learning something. No one learns, though, the cries of machines fluted more subtly than birdsong and more finely honed to kill. |
About the author:
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and teaches at Keene State College. His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals. |
