Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond

By Galway Kinnell b. 1927 Galway Kinnell

The old watch: their

thick eyes

puff and foreclose by the moon. The young, heads

trailed by the beginnings of necks,

shiver,

in the guarantee they shall be bodies.

In the frog pond

the vapor trail of a SAC bomber creeps,

I hear its drone, drifting, high up

in immaculate ozone.

And I hear,

coming over the hills, America singing,

her varied carols I hear:

crack of deputies' rifles practicing their aim on stray dogs at night,

sput of cattleprod,

TV going on about the smells of the human body,

curses of the soldier as he poisons, burns, grinds, and stabs

the rice of the world,

with open mouth, crying strong, hysterical curses.

And by paddies in Asia

bones

wearing a few shadows

walk down a dirt road, smashed

bloodsuckers on their heel, knowing

flesh thrown down in the sunshine

dogs shall eat

and flesh flung into the air

shall be seized by birds,

shoulder blades smooth, unmarked by old feather-holes,

hands rivered

by blue, erratic wanderings of the blood,

eyes crinkled shut at almost seeing

the drifting sun that gives us our lives.

Galway Kinnell, “Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond” from Three Books. Copyright © 2002 by Galway Kinnell. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved, www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.

Source: Three Books (2002)

Biography

Galway Kinnell is an award-winning poet best known for poetry that connects the experiences of daily life to much larger poetic, spiritual, and cultural forces. Often focusing on the claims of nature and society on the individual, Kinnell’s poems explore psychological states in precise and sonorous free verse. The New York Times Book Review essayist Morris Dickstein called Kinnell "one of the true master poets of his . . .

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