Toll Takers 1972
From the road, you can no longer see
the hut where the old men stayed when
there was no one waiting to press the small tan
and red ticket into a willing withered palm,
just to gain entrance to the tall steel girded bridge
that spanned the Ohio.
….
Dressed in their cotton white tee and suspenders,
wreathed in thick gray smoke from their black
bowled pipes, chatting about Rainbow Trout
biting up river, and a time when bridges
would be free access and patrons could
come and go as they pleased.
….
I can see them laughing at the absurdity, some spitting
tobacco juice into a spittoon on the floor next to them,
others clutching their pipes for dear life,
like holding the past in their bare hands.
…
Years have passed and there is nothing left of the building,
like a bruise that fades and is gone. The road has turned
from two lanes to four and the old steel girders
have yielded to a newer suspension bridge.
….
If you listen close you can still hear the wind
ask, Tickets please? If you inhale deeply,
you can still smell their tobacco,
circling the air like a ghost.
….
This poem is from the chapbook In The Throes Of Beauty by Kevin D. LeMaster (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/in-the-throes-of-beauty-by-kevin-d-lemaster/
In The Throes Of Beauty includes #poems of place and what it is like growing up in #Appalachia. Some poems deal with grief, love and sorrow while other are centered around the land, lost ways of life and how the #Ohio #river interacts with all these factors. It is a cohesive collection of song in the grace of despair.
Kevin D. LeMaster lives in Northeastern Kentucky with his wife of thirty-six years. Writing has alway been a passion of his, but not completely realized until his early forties when he joined a group of older poets known as The Phoenix Writers, from there he took the advice of seasoned poets and honed his craft with a deeper understanding of poetry and the elements that make up a good poem.
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