Still Life with Copper Creek and the Unabomber
The name spoke of sharp light
gathered around stones and cast up
against the undersides of aspen
leaves or carried for miles
in a hawk’s rusty plumage.
But the place had burned,
and though a few pines
sheltered the brook, all else
was scar and skeleton,
whole swaths of antlered trees
and dust, Snowbank Lake a low
puddle where cutthroat
turned bellyup. The nearest town
was Lincoln, its tiny library
the one in which Kaczynski
made his requests for just
a little-odd interlibrary loans,
though the librarian there
called him polite, quiet,
and where in a clapboard cabin
he tamped his hatred into cold
cylinders. He would claim
that it was development –
a road through wilderness he loved –
that turned his mind to darkness.
How long fire must have been kept
from this place, deadfall and brush
piling, awaiting ignition,
the jackpine and lodgepole dropping
year after year the cones
which require flame to spread
their seeds, to pry open
sap's seal like some fetal fist,
fingers cracking apart
at last, that spreads,
and reaches, and grips.
