Sunday Poem

ROAD ENDING 

At the end of the road a hunter’s hut
boarded all summer, the fraying bush
backing against it, a ragged fringe
of beggar’s ticks, rust tassels, thorns,
and boulders pushed to the water’s edge
where the graders turned.
There was no one home. 

And no one in the water. Overhead
the white threads spidered from a jet
drifted across where the evening star
was not yet shining. 

What were the words I could not use,
the thoughts I could not think to say?
The white lake shook in the early dusk. 

Something was lost we were waiting for,
summer, perhaps, or snow.

By M. Travis Lane, from The Essential M. Travis Lane 

(ed. Shane Neilson, The Porcupine's Quill, 2015)