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 Contents | June 2004 More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly. |
Loggers
by John Struloeff .....  Hear the author read this poem (in RealAudio)They fly down from the mountains in their high-rise trucks with half-mufflers rumbling and rattling, burnt diesel trailing, scenting the air until long after they've passed. It is Friday, and shortly after you sit at the bar, numb and sore from flipping sticks at the mill, their trucks will roar into the gravel lot, and they will park at the far edge and slam their doors. They talk and laugh loud, like veterans of an artillery unit, and when they push through the door, they're all you hear. They smell like overheated engines and moss, and wherever they stand or sit they shed wood chips and fine dust, order mugs of watered sap, tell stories metered in board feet. Mondays, after they've returned from hidden lives in houses far in the trees, they chew their sandwiches in the Mini-Mart, looking out at their trucks beneath the cloudy skies. They are trying to remember the trees yet to be faced, sawed, and felled. They are still feeling the jump and kick and hum of the saws in their hands. Too soon the crew chief starts his truck, and as it idles— the knock-knock of diesel—the others rise and ease their way outside, nodding at the young woman cashier. Their trucks clatter to life, and they all back away and bump onto the road, snarling and rasping back up into the trees.
John Struloeff teaches at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where he is also an editor for Prairie Schooner. Copyright © 2004 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; June 2004; Loggers; Volume 293, No. 5; 94. |
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