Adam Houle
Early November on the Television
Before the deer can find the cracked skulls
of pumpkins at the subdivision’s ragged edge,
candy canes march across the TV screen.
The well qualified enjoy zero percent interest.
Cars loom in metallic wrap on long stone driveways.
The snow is light and slow and no nuisance. Couples
draped in so much love that only jewelry will do
have flown somewhere balmy and expensive
to present each other more keepsakes.
The waitstaff waits, tucked beside a bird
of paradise. As viewers, we’re led to believe
table service is purpose. Our TV hums,
and we work hard to smile, to burst
the thought balloons leaking from our heads.
The Car Lines
Whole swaths of crops
gone, cultivars become lore
for our children.
So long, the experts say,
to strawberries, bananas, corn,
beans, and stone fruits:
your plums, your peaches,
your cherries in cute pairs
joined where two stems end
in a woody little clot.
Maybe they’ll know cherries
at least by the slot machines
on spaceships, spinning dials past
sevens, gold bars, dice, and whatever
other ciphers meaning
nothing much to them.
What inscrutable world stirs
in schools pick-up lines,
the idle behemoths nudging them
now toward the exit.
Fable of New Weather
So confused were the bees,
frantic as the pressure sank
and snow hissed as it fell.
Nearly sleet, thick and fast,
it filled the open-mouthed flowers,
drifted at woody stems,
shaped the smooth contours
of established well-mulched beds.
So confused were the bees,
they went on working
regardless. What was faded pollen
gone cold to them? They packed
snow into their buckets, lugging it
hiveward, emptied them and left again.
So confused were the bees
in various warehouses they grumbled
and sorted and packed the cells.
So confused were the bees
by the silence of the queen.
Accountants checked columns.
Thick-haired ministers called this a portent
and suffered for it, were killed
or run off. Revelation, some bees argued,
will come but has not yet arrived.
Calamity cannot lead to change
not that this is a calamity of course
—look, just look at the bounty,
look how clear how pure it runs when
you hold it. So confused were the bees
they went like hell back to work
and grew selfish and small and kept
their own counsel and were faithless
at last even to that. The problem, pal,
is that you think there’s a problem.
Some might call this winter.
For others, it’s just the end of fall.
Weeding Casually to Keep Up the Appearance
Losing interest
we let the beds go wild
with sprite mimosa trees
and pecans, squirrel hid
and bursting up green life,
Florida Betony, clover,
ragweed and bind, smilax,
ivies covering ivies covering
once-stately shrubbery
because, love, we are stately
ourselves only sometimes,
only by accident or in defense,
and only when someone
else is watching. With you
I am the manikin that comes alive,
electric to feel these limbs
as they work the yard
to trick the wild into shape
and hide what’s come unmade.
What providence blooms
and what new bird is this
that praises us daily?
Who cares what he’s called
when we know what he means.
Adam Houle is the author of Stray (Lithic Press), a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Guesthouse, The Shore, and elsewhere. He lives in South Carolina, where he teaches at Francis Marion University and co-edits Twelve Mile Review.