Jack Spula

Jack Bradigan Spula

Nobody but ancestors

From the book:

Bridge out

A decently distant upland storm

Can build enough momentum

To make a detour permanent,

So you brake at a mound of black gravel,

Head-high, staked with improvisations

That will do the job, and no more.

So you just stand and look at the new

Arrangement, knowing you never

Wanted it this way. If you wanted anything,

It was fast water, not the clouded pool

You got --- But in the middle of your thoughts,

A family drives up behind the warning signs.

A man and woman and three noisy kids

Took two right turns and now need a moment.

In a flash, the kids are on a footpath upstream

Toward an old beaver hut,

But the wet clumps between

The wooden ribs make it clear

This is not the home it was.

So after skipping a few flat stones

And kicking some round rejects aside,

Everybody piles back into the car.

The kids are unhappy

With each other and the parents are glad

To be on the road, where

Looking ahead is a necessity,

But where it also

Pays to check the mirror.

A lifelong advocate for the Eastern Great Lakes and Northern Appalachian bioregions, Jack Bradigan Spula was trained as a pianist and musicologist, worked for decades as a community organizer and alternative journalist, and now wrestles daily with poetry's overwhelming truths - while trying to find language less grandiose than that, yet more precise. Born and raised in Niagara Falls, New York, Jack is a longtime Rochester resident and frequent pilgrim throughout the Adirondacks and the Southern Tier, Ontario and Quebec, Pennsylvania and New England.

Nobody but ancestors

is a 36 page hand-sewn chapbook  - $10.00.

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