On the funeral road, five miles beyond the farm
it looms still, like a silo, then diminishes
as you get close. Your sound won’t raise alarm
out here. There’s none but you. The wishes
of no one left alive will keep you out,
or let you in. The door is probably locked
anyway, closed upon itself, redoubt
for certainties. Surrounding it the block
foundations — reservoirs of ice and weed —
still cluster, like white holes around the heart.
You will not try the door — where it might lead,
you cannot say. The dead have done their part,
for here you are among them once again,
between the legacies of grief — the snow,
the boxes of white quiet, the leaving, then
the watching it loom larger as you go.
Brian Gavin writes: “I like this piece because the church-image haunted (or taunted!) me for several years before I got around to giving it some context in a poem. When it finally came to the page it felt like I had paid off a debt — like I had finally given the image a chance to tell its story. The fact that this story turned out to be no story at all — just a bunch of hints and implications — seemed to fit the image.“
Brian Gavin is a retired Distribution Manager who started writing poetry about 7 years ago. His poems have appeared in The Journal of Formal Poetry, Peninsula Poets and Snakeskin Magazine, and in the Potcake Chapbook ‘Careers and Other Catastrophes’. He lives in Lakeport, Michigan, USA, with his wife Karen.
Careers! We’ve all had one or several of them, for better or worse. Marcus Bales and Daniel Galef review the frustrations of shopfloor sales and professions, while Annie Drysdale gives an exhilarating view of farmwork. From the newcomers (Gerry Cambridge, Martin Elster, Brian Gavin, Susan McLean, Rob Stuart, Tom Vaughan and Mindy Watson) we have everything from office workers and cafe proprietors to a madame ageing out of her profession and a hangman lamenting his obsolescence.
Form in Formless Times 