David Hargreaves
Born in Detroit, David Hargreaves is a long-time resident of Oregon, and a poet, translator, and linguist by profession. Most recently, his translation of Chittadhar Hrḍaya’s “River,” from Nepal Bhasa, the endangered, ancestral language of the Kathmandu Valley, appeared in the anthology River Poems (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poet Series, 2022). Other poems appear in a wide variety of journals, including American Journal of Poetry, Passages North, Naugatuck River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere.
Passing Time at Coffin Butte Landfill
We are gathered here
to dump a friend
of a friend’s
cat-pissed couch—
a drinker, word is
his liver gave out—
and his broken dresser, soiled clothes,
mildewed boxes
full of sketch books,
a life’s worth of life
drawing,
plus his pecker-track stained mattress,
my friend wisecracks,
then tacts,
but art endures,
one of his woodcuts
hangs in the Guggenheim.
True.
Still, a landfill ode,
if honest, should honor
impermanence
in all things. Granted
some last longer—Styrofoam,
disposable diapers—
than others—Tibetan monk,
his gilded skull,
now a vessel for drinking chaang.
But time respects nothing;
we too are things, like banjos,
coffee pots, wedding rings—
future artifacts excavated,
displayed under glass.
My friend backs the trailer
to the edge of the pit.
I survey the pastoral
scene beyond the landfill, new mown hay,
then reach down,
unchaining the tailgate, gagging
on the stench of August.
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