Hilary Russell
Good morning, everyone. Fall is upon us, it seems. Apples are ripe and abundant, and so does nature nourish and sustain us.
Our poet today, Hilary Russell, has had an interesting life. Having grown up outside of New York City, he now lives in the Berkshires, in Western Massachusetts. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Villanova University and a master’s from Wesleyan University. But what is interesting is what he now does for a living. After teaching high school English for many years, he took up small boat building and, through his company, Berkshire Boat Building School, he teaches classes in boat-building. While many, if not most poets have college and graduate school degrees, few, if any, build boats.
His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Boulevard, The George Washington Review, and other well-known journals. He is the author of Giving up the House, a chapbook (Mad River Press); The Anthology of American Poetry (Wayside Press), and The Portable Writer (Wayside Press). Among the many venues where he has read his work are Villanova University, Pace University, The Folger Shakespeare Library, and Arrowhead, the home of Herman Melville in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
It’s my distinct pleasure to share these three poems by Hilary Russell:
The Old War
The House Gets
Darlene Newman’s Exercise
–Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
The Old War
I have to float it in a foot of water
back up against it, flop in, then swing
aboard my skinny calves and bony feet.
I don’t think then about disembarking
and slogging ashore god-knows-where,
at least not once I’m settled, tilting forward,
paddle poised, about to slip through
April’s ice-out, listening for the fiercely
chirping Osprey and the Great Blue
Heron’s angry kuck, kuck, kuck.
The House Gets
ahead of us, and winter
dithers like the plague –
this-that, late-now.
How many courses
will she serve
to our sorry senses?
Hospitals and houses –
plates of astonished friends.
The prodigal sun
will soon spruce
the slushy day.
My wife says a friend
said, “Moving is death.”
Pillow talk.
She takes out the ashes,
worries the dust,
asks me to vacuum.
How much? How Much?
All of it! Every room!
DARLENE NEWMAN’S EXERCISE
Chub’s wife Darlene likes to keep her lawn
looking perfect. She seems to mow it every day.
When you drive by, she’s in her black bikini
leaning into her mower and shooting her eyes
at you with a dead look like every part
of her works except her face. No one can wave
at a face like that. But Darlene told me:
“Chub likes to get at his body work right after dinner.
It takes an hour to fix it, but he eats in fifteen minutes.
Then I don’t see him till five-thirty the next day.
For exercise I mow the lawn and take walks.
There’s not an hour in the day I don’t see a vehicle
Chub’s worked on. Sometimes the rust is coming back.
I never miss one going by. It’s how I get my exercise.”