Tales of the Mohawk Valley by Eleanor Lerman (LANDMARKS Series)

Tales of the Mohawk Valley
by Eleanor Lerman

The old are cities coming back to life again: Oneida, Utica,
            Syracuse, Ilion
Their motto of service and industry has replaced even the
extremes of upstate weather as the topic of conversation on
            everyone’s lips
Brickface has been repointed, geraniums snapped into
            new window boxes
and the papers have added food columns and sections on the arts
The spirit is municipal, the worship, Presbyterian, and everyone
is busy, busy—even prayer is jobbed out for a purpose
Keep the frost off the asparagus, the trout eager for
            the sportsman’s hook
In the summer, contented people fall asleep in Adirondack chairs
and their dreams are scented by valley crops and hilltop flowers

But in your mother’s house on Eller Street, with Canada
            in the window,
the wind sweeps in, already thinking about winter. This is
the Leatherstocking wind that closed the old factories, that
brings the headless horseman and blows the witches into the yard
            to steal our housecoats from the line
And in your mother’s house, progress has not reached us:
I sleep too much and you have managed to remain unemployed

Every afternoon, the pots and pans bang out their grief: who will
            make our stew?
Who will pour out the batter for our flapjacks? Every night
the house weeps and refuses to be sold. Every morning,
I try to make it to the store, and every street is like a bridge
            across a mill basin
and the mill wheel is turning and we are the labor of its years,
            the poor grist

So come. If the house will not join with the community, just
            lock the door and walk away
We can cross the Mohawk Valley while the seasons are
            still turning,
walk beneath the waterfalls, across great table of broken schist
to where the earth has cleaved open and peer into its iron heart,
            its silver veins
At the end of the valley there is a lake with a monster who lives
            in a deep, cold pool
That can be our destination: we can buy a guidebook and
            some chocolate
and picnic on the shore. Thus will we partake of the bounty
            of the state,
participate in its rejuvenation. We will blend in with the
tourists, be indistinguishable from people with money and
            plans and things to do

We will ride a boat that glides above the monster’s house and
speculate with strangers: How do you think he makes his living?
How has he survived so long, unknown, unseen, and free?

Originally published in Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds (Sarabande Books, 2005)

PHOTO: Aerial shot of the city of Utica, New York, by Mahmoud Masad, used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I work in the early mornings. For the past 20 years, my office has been a purple couch and there is always a little dog sleeping next to me as I work. This poem is a remembrance of time I spent living in the Mohawk Valley in Upstate New York.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eleanor Lerman is the author of numerous award-winning collections of poetry, short stories, and novels. She is a National Book Award finalist, a recipient of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts for poetry and the New York Foundation for the Arts for fiction. In 2016, her novel, Radiomen (The Permanent Press), was awarded the John W. Campbell Prize for the Best Book of Science Fiction. In 2018, her novel, The Stargazer’s Embassy (Mayapple Press), received an American Fiction Award. Her most recent novel, Satellite Street (The Permanent Press, 2019) has been named a finalist for both the Montaigne Medal and the Eric Hoffer Award. Visit her at eleanorlerman.com.

PHOTO: The author sitting on the steps of The Limelight cafe in Chelsea, New York City.