Book of the Day: Posting the Watch by Michele F. Cooper

The gritty narratives of Michele F. Cooper's Posting the Watch--about one woman's experience of farm life--always keep my full attention. Cooper does this partly through her wide range of formal techniques, ranging from brief, even blunt, lyrics to long prose poems.

Here's one exuberant example:

Sadie Does a Little Jig on the Long Road Home

She is walking down this two-lane,
   see?
And stepping fine along
   those double yellow lines.
Two-stepping, you might call it,
   side-stepping,
doing her little jig,
   trying to get where she's going,
moving 'round, but getting there,
   if you get me.

And she's singing, hear?
   Singing blues--the darkest blue.
You can do that,
   sure,
sing your heart out
   like there's no tomorrow,
not for you, anyway, not when
   you so down in the heels
you can't see your eyelids
   through the salt water-fall.

You can sing 'em high,
   she says,
send those low-down blues
   high as a kite,
high as the clouds up there,
   those big white ice-cream clouds
over the back hills,
   the far hills, back a bit,
not those wispy nothin's
   just overhead.

You see those ice-cream clouds,
   hear those blues,
and sing your eyes out
   till you get those babies
   up where they belong,
carrying your weighed-down baggage--
   all thousand pounds of it--
into a big, bountiful,
   flying aeroplane.

Not a real plane, mind,
   just a head-thought,
getting your sorrows into high gear,
   singing them out,
your big baggage blues,
   singing them
till you're gliding high,
   up where you wanted to be,
wanted to be always,
   always knew it, needed it, wanted to be there all the days--
   night-times, day-times--
night-times, too.

Sure, she wants those
   night-times, too.
Get on off'n this low-down runway
   and out the door.
Real far.
   Real high.
    Real fast.

This poem lifts up the spirit, "Real high./Real fast." Well done.

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