Talking to the Hanged Man

by William Doreski

The small crowd disperses.  The air

hums with fragmented hymns. Sunday

always feels too vague, the hills

burdened with what Yeats called “autumn

glory” and others call “sorrow

of leaf-fall.” Somewhere a python

digests a full-grown man. Somewhere

a bomb erupts in a trash can.

Somewhere a mob of rapists

plots to ravish a tiny village

where the men have died in war.

Here in the brassy roadside weeds

of New Hampshire, plastic bottles

sulk unredeemed, little crimes

that define us. I consume

more than my share of culture,

but like the snake spend little time

with mastication and far too long

with digestion. This afternoon

the slant of light re-sculpts the trees

to suggest a Halloween terror

not even tiny children believe

but everyone wishes were real.

I recall the garage down the street

where a man hanged himself to prove

his love for his unfaithful wife.

More than half a century ago

I tormented myself by staring

into the dark of that ruin

until I saw the hanged man hanging

and forced him to catch my eye.

The creak of rope on rafter

still lingers. The whisk and shudder

of windy leaves across the highway

suggests many lost conversations;

but my foolish attempt to talk

to that hanged man is my only

instance of self-defining speech.

William Doreski’s work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently Waiting for the Angel (Pygmy Forest Press, 2009).