Brian Simoneau
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Walden
A radio plays classic rock
across the pond, its shore
shadowed by headlights
parked at the woods’ edge.
A pick-up lurches under the weight
of six or seven kids getting drunk.
The next morning a four-year-old
in a bathing suit steps on a bottle cap.
A helicopter floats overhead, rattles
toward Boston with reports of traffic
on 95 North. An ambulance fades away.
And I walk around the pond, imagine
the path was worn by Henry himself
returning in the dark from a night
of lying in his boat and playing
the flute to an inattentive moon
smoothly riding its course above
a world he’d never completely come to know.
Bio
Brian Simoneau grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, and graduated from Amherst College; he received an M.F.A. at the University of Oregon and an M.A. in English and American Literature at Boston University; his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Natural Bridge, Poet Lore, Poetry East, Red Rock Review, Smartish Pace, and others; he currently lives in Boston with his wife and daughter.