Up-Country, by A. R. Ammons
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Their faces fire-red and steaming, the hunters
are out the first morning along the edges and
crossings of backroads: guns unlocked hang
broken over their arms: they blow the fist not
caught in the jacket pocket: back home, the wife
is out of the kitchen and off to work, work now
mostly deskwork, women’s work: the men pad their
right shoulders, eager for the answering recoil
of the spent thrust: the bark on the snow-paled
trees seems pure male: the brush thicket, the
mazes of stripped vines, the sunk water under
pooled leaves, the slash-back branches are male,
the bucks springing, startled still, dropping:
back at the office, in the shop, the women are
fiddling with papers: out here, the parameters
burst, the deep roots of the caverns spill through.
From “Brink Road” by A. R. Ammons (W.W. Norton: $23; 230 pp.) Copyright 1996 Reprinted by permission.
