So Much Depends

By James Dufresne

All deference to Mr. Williams,

but there are many other red objects

upon which so much depends

regardless of their juxtaposition to fowl.

Red hot water bottle pressed to an ear, insulated with white washcloth,

red dump truck stained with road sand, hauling demolished white plaster,

red windmill varnished with shellac, with spinning white paddles,

red candle brimming with wax, perched on white holder,

red fire engine freshly washed and waxed, a white Dalmatian atop,

red screwdriver speckled by old paint drops, securing the white mailbox,

red Coca-Cola can beaded with condensation, atop the white tablecloth

are equally dependable for their own purpose.

So much depends on these objects

but like the red wheel barrow depends

on a driver to grasp both handles,

lift its load, keep balance and spot-deliver its contents

So much depends on people using any red tool,

on knowing how to use them and exerting the

willpower necessary to start the task, then

persevere through setback, force majeure, or bad design.

With the red setting sun, so much depends on

walking through our red doors, eating a dinner

of roasted red potatoes and warming by red embers,

while thinking about what color to paint the barn.

Redemption Center

By James Dufresne

A bright yellow condom lies unrolled and watery
at the bottom of the clear plastic bag of empties
propped up in the shopping cart in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
The hand with a purple latex glove purposely avoids it.

The aluminum cans, plastic soda containers and glass beer bottles
of collegiate provenance were dropped in the first-floor communal bin
and forgotten --- not worth the weighty, shameful process of cashiering
at the U’s co-op. They were transported 20 miles to be redeemed.

It is late winter and the cans that were discarded with residual liquids are heavy
with frozen soda or beer. The machinery crushes or crashes all that is sent down
its conveyor, so long as serial numbers are recognizable amid its spinning frenzy.
The nickels accrue on the small screens, 229 x .05 = $11.45.

Walking out the door toward the main building, with head rolled back on shoulders
in hockey-goalie swift motion left to right, one two three soft cracks unleash
the tension built from a day doing nothing that will not have to be done again tomorrow.

Like the cans, we await whatever the machinery of this world will bring us to next,
dependent on so much happenstance outside of our singular grasp in how we got here
In this place, waiting to be pummeled, melted down and made anew.
The Boston-NYC vapor trails against the dull blue sky disappear quickly from the parched air.

The clerk who aims and shoots the barcodes checks the driver’s license suspiciously, says
You look like you're about 19, then relents in defeat and notes in parting that it’s a good day
when redemption brings in enough so you only have to pay a dollar fourteen for a thirty pack of Pabst.

To be of use

by Marge Piercy from “Circles on the Water”

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

The Underwater Canoe

By James Dufresne

A whitish blob suspended just beneath the blue-brown water in the afternoon sun leads me to reason that it is the same canoe that two days ago loosed from its mooring and was filled by the heavy early spring rains and dipped down, down, down and disembarked.

As the blob continues on its path midway through the islands’ strait, the mind daydreams about the currents being navigated through the underwater, icy cold after a winter in deep freeze. Who are its paddlers? Who provides the strength to complement the steering?

The sunken canoe makes no noise as it glides, even when beaten upon the underwater boulders forming the foot of the island. Fullness muffles the clunks an empty boat on the surface would drum and echo for all the summer cottage owners who rake their pale lawns.

Afloat, occupants would wave to these laborers and slightly judge neighbors by a yard’s appearance. The condition of the lake bed spoke of lazy tenants --- leaves not raked, the soil swathed with freshwater elodea, fishing gear and dog poop left on the ice that sunk as litter and waste.

The canoe slips past all with no destination, no purpose that people contrive for making such a voyage in a thin vessel. It swims past redds that will soon house bass eggs, silent now as a Great White that lake children imagined lurking behind them as they swam, zigzags of Brownian motion in the liquid clear.