Combustion
Even when the summer heat
numbs the heart and we’re hard stuck
in the urban rim’s rut of traffic,
choked down the funnel
of construction cones from three
to two to one weary lane of humanity
inching over the Kosciuszko Bridge
bumper to battered bumper and late again
for a gathering of friends, you
can’t help but offer kind words
to the men and their oily machines.
I admire how you find so much to admire.
Among the scattershot of jackhammering,
the welding, the riveting, the revving
of internal combustion engines, the belched plumes
of diesel exhaust, the ever-haze of overreach,
you say listen. Out there, cutting the industrial racket:
the soft coo and wing-squeak of skittering pigeons
and that faint sound of love songs wafting out
the inch-opened windows of the creeping along.
We stare ahead.
Your hand finds mine,
our fingers intertwine, lock together
in this uneasy moving on.
This poem is from the chapbook Rain by Michael Brosnan and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/rain-by-michael-brosnan/
Rain is a flat-out great collection of #poems that explores the complexity and fragility of #life in our uncertain and volatile times. At the heart of these lyrical and narrative poems is a longing for both understanding and deeper connection all around. The rain here is both literal and figurative, “falling as if fated to fall.” In these engaging interior and exterior landscapes, we are asked to focus our attention on what matters. We range widely here — from the hills of Maine to a crowded New York deli, from a roadside rest stop to a town decimated by strip mining, from a tidal marsh in winter to a storefront display of mannequins, and beyond. But, in all, the rich language and musicality in these poems underscore a central, palpable wish — the need for “new direction to obliterate the old” and, in our troubled times, finding “”all the antonyms of diffident.”
Michael Brosnan is a poet and writer based in Exeter, New Hampshire. He is the author of three earlier collections of poetry — The Sovereignty of the Accidental (2018), Adrift (2023), and Emu-Blis, Bums Lie, Blue-ism (2024). His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is also the author of Against the Current, a book on inner-city education, and writes often on issues related to education and equity.
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