walking in the breakdown lane
by louise erdrich
Walking in the Breakdown Lane
Wind has stripped
the young plum trees
to a thin howl.
They are planted in squares
to keep the loose dirt from wandering.
Everything around me is crying to be gone.
The fields, the crops humming to be cut and done with.
Walking in the breakdown lane, margin of gravel,
between the cut swaths and the road to Fargo,
I want to stop, to lie down
in standing wheat or standing water.
Behind me thunder mounts as trucks of cattle
roar over, faces pressed to slats for air.
They go on, they go on without me.
They pound, pound and bawl,
until the road closes over them farther on.
-Louise Erdrich, from Jacklight (1984)
I found Jacklight in a box of books that my college’s library was giving away for whatever reason. Inside the front cover of the book there is a thank you note dated 1988, addressed to a professor who was still teaching at the time (kind of a bummer that he gave it away, sorry Denise). If not for that box of books, I probably never would have read Erdrich’s poetry, since she is most famous for her fiction—so thank you to Professor Newhall for giving this book to the library. If you like to read novels I would pick up The Round House, The Beet Queen, or Love Medicine.
My favorite thing about this poem is that you can hear it, it’s filled with noise. Nature reflecting internal turmoil, all that stuff. It’s a moment of overwhelming loneliness, which is loud in its own way.
xo
sam