Farmland
Craig Cotter
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We’d leave the backyard of my parents’ house
for the farmer’s land.
Walk into the woods he left untouched
down to a river.
A small, slow-moving river—
maybe more a creek—
say 8 feet across and that late summer day
2 feet deep.
We’d cross the water,
my tennis shoes
your work boots
where it bent,
then head for the woods.
Walk about a mile
until all the car noise
and all the sounds of people were gone.
2
That last time
I was 27, you were 26.
When we turned the bend in the river
heading out into the woods,
it was gone.
Railroad tracks torn-up.
Thousands of acres clear-cut for housing tracts.
I sat down.
I was never thinner—runner
with brown hair flowing over my shoulders
in thick waves.
You were never stronger,
light blonde German hair
in many directions.
3
At the bend in the river
we knew things.
I was back from Los Angeles,
you were married to a girl with two baby sons.
You drove us in your large black pick-up,
2-ton bed, for your swimming pool business
to a gas station, said, “Give me twenty dollars.”
You never asked to borrow anything.
Handed you the twenty.
4
We met at a club
where you danced straight.
It was a stupid club on East Ave
trying to be hip,
mostly straights
with perfect love and soul mating.
I turned around and left.
5
Later that night
you climbed the fire-escape,
stepped into my loft through the window
I’d left open,
took off your shirt, socks, work boots,
got under the covers in jeans,
asleep as soon as your arms wrapped around me,
exhaling vodka and beer in my hair.
6
In the morning you said Kathy told you to choose:
to stay with her you could never see me again.
*
It wasn’t like I invited you to LA or
wanted to live in Rochester.
It seemed we could keep being friends on the side.
We thought she was unreasonable.
You said today would have to be the last day.
*
You picked-me-up in your black pick-up the next
night. That was the last one.
A Christian conservative Bible preacher held forth on AM radio.
I couldn’t tell if it was a joke.
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Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986. His poems have appeared in hundreds of journals in the U.S., France, Italy, the Czech Republic, the U.K., Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, India and Ireland. Books include The Aroma of Toast, Chopstix Numbers, and After Lunch with Frank O’Hara. www.craigcotter.com
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