Peggy
Hall
As Peggy Hall points out, Frost relished questions that have no
reply. The urban pastoral of this native Kentuckian uses the same
narrative technique that builds to an overwhelming question as Frost used
in many of his poems of voices.
“I thought of
questions that have no reply.” -- Robert Frost
URBAN PASTORAL
Hunkered down, with
still hands cupped to smoke,
though it seemed to me
he held a flute
or jew’s-harp I had
child-seen many times
sideways hummed by
mountain men Spring met
in country graveyards,
herding in our clan
of hill-born kin. But
then I saw the wisp
snake up. A stranger
crouched in our back yard.
His shirt looked white
on white. The Florida sun
blurred it so. I’d
left my glasses on my desk,
just walked outside to
turn the clothes to “DRY,”
used to waving,
tendrilled ferns, green palms,
or deep-blood
cardinals bathing in the pond
that Harold stacked
the slated rocks to make.
Used to sirens heard
but blocked from view,
and school bells
squiring all the children on,
and alley trucks that
moved the margins clean.
We’d raised wood
fences, latticed them still higher.
The bougainvillea
thorned them all around.
Except one gate.
“His entry, Ma’am,” they said,
arrested in their
brisk, policing scan
by my babble, like a
sheep’s head, all jaw:
“No, I never saw him
clearly, or even move,
approach our deck,
gazebo door, or house.
I was surprised, you
see, that he came at all.
I turned, as in a
dream, to make this call,
and rushed to bolt the
doors, the three of them,
afraid to look again,
to see him where .…
But yes, I see your
point. So peaceful here.
Sure, he could hoist
himself up six feet high,
and just be glad to
rest beside the pool.
Convenience stores
don’t let you loiter long.
Oh no! I never saw the
way he left…”
The laundry lay all
day, forgotten, wet,
though Harold came, to
build atop the gate,
while, hunkered down
to think it through,
I smoldered—angry,
scared, defiant, sad.
Who was the
wolf-snake? The shepherd? The lamb?
A native of the
Kentucky mountains and a retired English teacher, Peggy C. Hall spends her
time writing in Miami, FL and in Kooskia, ID. In 2003, she was published
in 32 venues, including English Journal, New Millennium
Writings, Bibliophilos, Mobius, and Once Upon a
Time.
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