Charles Goodrich

The Old Carpenter Does Happy Hour

–for Clem Starck

After the invasion of Ukraine, you gave up
studying Russian. These days
your dining room table is piled instead
with histories of Central and Eastern Europe,
biographies of murdered poets,
and several translations of The Street of Crocodiles.

Meanwhile, the fences
around your forty acres of woodland
have started to sag, and the garden plots
your long-dead wife planted decades ago
are gone to blackberries.

Therefore every evening
you take two beers from the fridge,
a stout and a lager, and sit on your veranda
watching the goldfinches and chickadees
take seed from the feeder for an hour,
or even two hours,
almost like a man at peace.

Charles Goodrich writes and gardens near the confluence of the Marys and Willamette Rivers in Corvallis, Oregon. His books include the poetry collections Watering the Rhubarb; A Scripture of Crows; Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden; and Insects of South Corvallis. His first novel, Weave Me a Crooked Basket, was published by the University of Nevada Press in the Fall of 2023. FMI: charlesgoodrich.com