PERSON Poem: John Denver’s Chainsaw, by Mara Lowhorn

The sky looks like a pearl
scraped from the oyster,
unwilling shells pried
apart
by the man’s callused hands.
A man who asks himself,
Why do all the sad things
happen only to poets?
And a man who believes it
despite the oyster’s split spine,
clawed curves.
One who would note
two fewer eagle nests this year,
one who could make a meal
out of a homegrown tomato slice.

It feels like pissing in a clean bathtub—
relief that could kill him. A
mustard gas spatter.
Like trying to suture it all back
together after sawing clean through,
the layers of fabric and padding and springs,
too yielding beneath the rev.
Gnawing against stitches sewn
by thimbled fingers on frosty Sundays
while he watched America’s team.

He leaves things lesser than he found them,
just in more pieces—
like a cloud breaking apart to let the sun in,
or a baby bird shattering the egg with its beak.
All of what nature intended,
all of what he scrapes up
during his riverbed rounds, knowing
that the deeper he goes,
the tougher the earth will be.

And he tells himself
that if he were a musician,
he’d never want to fly again.

Author: poetryfest

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