Driving up Deerfield Hill out of Utica, due north,
gaining altitude as the towns get smaller.
Past Woodgate Road, that crosses the roller coaster
Hogsback heading out to Old Forge.
Reach Boonville, hard by the Black River,
where I once spent a sleepless night
in the casket showroom of cousin Carl’s funeral home.
Stop in at Slim’s Diner, now burned, for breakfast
with the lumberjacks in from the woods.
Going north out of there, on old 12D,
across the Moose, then Sugar Rivers,
to Talcottville, where Edmund Wilson
summered in the big stone house.
And west on the Golden Road to the rural cemetery
where my people are buried, graves going back
to Great Grandpa Michael, orphaned on the boat from Ireland.
Then south again, to West Leyden at the headwaters
of the Mohawk, and the big woods, where, as a boy,
Grandpa ran a trapline in the winter, froze his snowshoed feet,
and nearly died more than once.
Back to the days of Johnny Rimiller, his water powered sawmill
on the millpond, across the street from our family homestead,
cutting boards out of hemlock, pine, and spruce.
Grinding new edges on the teeth of the big circular saw each night,
the same millpond where my uncle Keith drowned at age 3
watching the men cutting ice for the ice house, his unnoticed body
lying in the cold soft mud among the snapping turtles and northern pike.
The smells of summer; the new-mown hay and cow manure,
the fresh-cut boards from the mill, Grandma Bessie’s mock orange.
And the winds that blow in off Lake Ontario, bringing
those unforgettable lake effect clouds, big electrical storms
in the summer, and impossibly heavy snows in the winter.
Mosquitos rising from the fields in the dusk, and hummingbirds
working the larkspur, lupine, columbine.
Those easy days, driving the dirt roads in cousin Lance’s old Chevy truck
with the straight six and dogleg shifter, watching the road go by
through the floorboards, climbing the fire tower at Gomer Hill
and going out by Whetstone Gulf to Tug Hill, where windmills now turn,
and panthers, moose, and bear still run.
And on to Fish Creek and Point Rock, where Uncle Ken caught brookies
and rainbows, fishing through the night, trying to still
his racing mind and memories of war, and of Keith, his drowned twin,
but never quite succeeding. The dead still dying, one by one.
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Brian Duncan lives in Kendall Park, New Jersey with his wife, Margie, and two cats. He worked in a virology laboratory at Princeton University for many years and is now happily retired. He enjoys devoting his time to poetry, gardening, and hiking, hoping to meet a dog on the trail.
© 2024, Brian T. Duncan
Halfway Down the Stairs 