Martin Elster

Talcott Mountain

Tramping over talus and roots of hemlock,
mud and dirt, my mongrel and I endeavor,
up this winding ribbon, to reach a summit
looking at Hartford.

Imitating rust-covered swings, two voices
echo off great hickory, oak, and boulders.
Maybe they’re observing us as we listen,
lucky to hear them.

Both my hands push firmly against a birch trunk,
lifeless. Then it quivers as if a mallet
struck a log drum, puffing white powder at me,
wanting my pity.

Wilbur spots a huge, iridescent creature,
hurtles like a meteor rushing Saturn,
pulls up at the edge of a lofty rock face,
losing the turkey.

From the cliff we look at the soaring raptors,
black as thunderheads and as minatory.
Lounging on the rocks, we can see the far-off
hillocks protected

by the mists of distance and time, green bosoms
floating on the planet’s asthenosphere like
clouds that wander over us — all our moments
coming and going.

Early saxifrage, with its sticky leaves, trap
insects which have tickled the mountain’s derma.
Roots crack rock as if they were drilling dentin.
Now we must leave it.

After resting muscles and lungs and heartbeats,
we descend this mountain of clotted lava,
reddish as a rust-covered hunk of metal,
down to the clear lake.

Heublein Tower, perched on the mountain’s apex,
watches as we hop in a cozy Buick,
roll down to our valley, and look back at it
winking like Venus.

The Cymbal Player

As bows and fingers quiver strings,
as lungs and lips whip up the air,
as notes soar on great falcon wings,

one player, seated in his chair
like a finch hid in a maple tree,
as if the creature wouldn’t dare

trill out above the symphony
(perhaps in fear of being caught
by a raptor high above the lea),

begins to rise like an afterthought
amid the pianissimos
and, like a hunter’s rifle shot

as bright as ninety-nine rainbows
of overtones, he spreads, then hits
two plates together. The ether glows

like sunlight through the woods. He sits
back down. And yet the clang still rings
and darts and dances, flutters, flits

and, for the merest moment, clings,
then fades away like all brief things.