Five Poems

By Dan Nygard
Contributing Writer

Out in the Woods

I made out with Jen Harper the best I could,
stolen whiskey, cigarettes on our lips.
She was a year older, a Sophomore; when she removed
her glasses (her face soft and cool
in the darkness,) my ribs ached,
a hurt outside of any love or prayer;
down the shore from the cabins,
hidden behind trees, we smelled their bonfire,
heard our elders, who were howling, drunk,
calling us, laughing our names across the water
into the air, and we made out as turning against,
two children made primal (by them! by them!)
like it was something we invented
in the fading smoke before dawn, ground imprinted in our hands,
waves hushing against driftwood
and tiny, white shells, but not to bring them back.

Highway 75 Elegy

Near Kragnes, Minnesota
Out where the wind hits
fast and cold to my ears,
where passing cars rattle me
as I stand still,
I speak to your silence, Dave,
the space between city and town.
I have been writing this
for seven years,
and tractors have spiraled the fields,
grasses waving
in the ditch.
I do not know why
but I have stopped here,
today,
to speak to this forgotten ground.
I have no rites to perform,
but I need to alter
the always and forever,
the hail and farewell,
as cars go to Fargo
and cars come home.

Monarch

I found you
while walking alone
in the thin woods
near my father’s house.
Dying, you embraced
a blade of grass,
your insect body stiff,
desiccated.
Only the wings
you once made
from eaten leaves,
now dry like dead leaves
shook slowly
as when you opened
the chrysalis
and unfolded.
They moved
silently like clouds;
I could hear
the blood in my face.
So I left you,
and how long
did it go on
until you stopped?

At Dad’s House in the Country

I tore open
an old lawn chair,
sat, heard its cracked weaving,
drank his beer
sitting where
driveway concrete
bordered gravel.
He was dying;
he would die
three months later:
his heart, his liver
worn down to the nub
and I guess I knew it
that evening,
how it would happen
it hit me
in the same way
some evenings
the leaves of the ash tree
become more distinct.

Ray

In front of his billet,
Korea, 1952.
Now he is made of sepia skin;
he looked past me
when I took this picture
to the landscape
which looked, he said,
like Minnesota.
His face spotted with dry mud,
hair slicked down
with sweat,
he lit a cigarette, smiled,
said “get out of here
with that.”
He wanted darkness
and quiet, in that moment,
so he dissolved
into his tent, 
fading like memory,
And this is what I have left.

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