A Hard Road: Weekly Visit

Heading east on Route 9 I know
the exact spot where I can look
in my rearview mirror and catch
a glimpse of the wind turbines
on the ridgeline above Willard
Pond. Nine slender, otherworldly
silver giants that tower above
the tree line.

Heading west on the drive
home the pale yellow
crescent moon topped
by Venus riding high
appears in the southwest.
For the moment, I’m good,
alone in the dark, radio on,
sipping a cup of black tea.

A Mozart allegro bursts
from the speakers. At 65
mph I drive with my left
hand, conduct the orchestra
with my right. To complete
this trifecta of sound and speed
the windmills reappear, red
warning lights flashing in the dark.

My Son at Thirty-Four

My son calls to tell me he’s decided
to take me to court, to force me to allow
him to have surgery. He forgets that he’s been
scanned, mapped, his brain activity scratched
out like crazy rivers on yards of rolling paper.
The split-brain operation won’t work.

He shifts, tells me he remembers a television
show about his life. He will win a million dollars,
he will be cured of epilepsy. If neurosurgeons
can’t fix him – God will. He is ecstatic. I charge
in with facts, forgetting that against this labyrinth
of delusions my words collapse.

I accept all this as normal, but sometimes
I let myself remember him at six, a skinny,
funny boy just learning to ride a bike, a boy
who fell and struck the earth like lightning –
splintered, quivering – a good boy who never flew
anywhere near the sun.

Constance Hooker Koons lives and writes in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire, USA. She is working on a series of pandemic poems and a collection of poems, Loving Better from a Distance.

Her publications include:

Cacti Fur – four poems (upcoming, July 2021)
The Poetry Porch – ‘Election Day Evening 2020; In Polarized Times; Twilight First Day of Fall’
Write Action Newsletter – ‘Submitting’
Naugatuck River Review – ‘The Day After Thanksgiving’
Finishing Line Press – Devotion to Lost Causes
The Anthology of New England Writers – ‘Late October’