Kelley White
Is it finished?
Cars were parked along the narrow road overgrown with weeds
by the abandoned waterslide. That place of silence where ghosts may raid
dust-filled tunnels to never-swept roads. And cars were parked up
and down the hills beside the forgotten bumper boats shifting
in the wind against each other’s soft rubber bodies and the asphalt climbing
wall, its harnesses clanging like empty flagpoles. I looked down the hill
and saw a satellite dish where none had ever been
and police lights flashing. Cries of people, pushing strollers,
unloading children from cars. I was afraid. Do I need to say that?
I had forgotten when to expect the sun to go down but I was certain it would not set
in that direction, that the people were heading away from light.
The lake lay gray as old meat in its harbor. I turned away,
hoping that the line of cars pulled at odd angles from the road would end
before my own road huddled into the heavy woods. It did. But even home, now
sitting at my kitchen table, I hear a kind of rumbling. I am singing to myself
to drown it out. Songs I’ve forgotten. Singing, opening envelopes, statements
from empty bank accounts, small papers with tomorrow’s news.
If you were here you might be able to recognize my songs. This is no time
to be alone. Banks of lights whir on, lighting up my woods, my trees, my wind.
A man at a bank of microphones. No.
Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire as a pediatrician. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are waterslide (Boston Poet Publishing, 2008) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books, 2010). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.
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