Poems by Fred Pollack

From the Water Wars

Their death, however slow, is still
too fast to perceive. I mean
if you keep averting your eyes,
as one does. The bodies
along highways and around
what remains of reservoirs have
a bell-curve distribution. While they
walked they shambled; now
they’re stringy, saggy, funny-looking.
For a while, trucks collect them.
Pedestrian jokes filter
down to the drivers from
the military. “That gal almost made it.”
“Where?” For a while, someone counts.

Not all the employed or soldiers, however,
are crass. One prefers tea
to coffee, though it costs
extra. He makes a production
of steeping and savoring.
A certain pensiveness, a show of
reluctance have become, within limits,
cool. I admit he’s easier
to imagine than people
he kills if they cross
the minefields: he too is privileged.
Objectivity is the last
luxury. The pleasures of brutes
are crude and loud; those more refined look like sorrow.

Brioche

Through the trees, a bit of the Sound –
sempiternal midafternoon –
and two-lane road. This county escaped
(bought its way out of) the coastal highway,
back in the days of taxes
and highways. A Tesla glints
around a bend. These scraps of outside
somehow don’t make the property feel
smaller. As if on cue,
birds rise. There’s a bird book and binoculars
on a ledge. Rooms away,
a precious polished grandfather clock
clangs. Crumbs and the Times
still lie across the table.
After breakfast it was said
this could all be left for later;
it’s later now, but the principle still obtains.
They’ve all been very nice.
Even left me alone. But the sofas,
the Bonnard, the watchful vanishing dog
aren’t mine. Beyond the trees a Tesla.
Since none of it belongs to me, however,
I don’t experience it.