By Mark Kraushaar

Where’er you walk cool gales
shall fan a glade.
Trees where you sit shall
crowd into a shade . . .
—G.F. Handel, “Semele”

These are some friends from years ago:
car buff and cyclist Carla Breese,
and Danny Leblanc, ninth-grade teacher
of science at his desk, legs crossed,
good-hearted, chewing his pen.

This is Agnes Cummins, Roxanne Watson,
Bob Mulvahill, and Donny O., and I picture them together
but I picture them alone and lost to me.
All my friends from years ago.
This is Margot and Peter
and here’s Mike C. and Mike D. who died, both
in twelfth grade and both in their cars.
And this is Jack Fraze at work in his shop
a pre-fab one-car garage, his ace-in-the-hole
and his anchor to windward: hot plate, mini fridge,
pea-green plastic lounger junk-picked
or boosted he never remembers.
Jack Fraze who’d fix anything
and everything, mowers
to toasters, broken or no.

And this is Bob York whose dream it was to drag
his sad sagging motorhome from Mobile,
Alabama, straight to Alaska.
How clearly I see him, powdered donut
on the bandsaw, greasy quilt, and cat box,
chipped plaster Jesus over the drill press.
This afternoon I let Bob stand for everyone I’ve known.
I let that rusting Winnebago stand for certain
uncertainty and I let Alaska
stand for Eden, Bob’s route
and arrival in Nome.

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Mark Kraushaar’s work has been included in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Yale Review, and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and has been a recipient of Poetry Northwest’s Richard Hugo Award. His collection, Falling Brick Kills Local Man, was published by U of Wisconsin P as winner of the 2009 Felix Pollak Prize. The Uncertainty Principle, published by Wayweiser Press, was the winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize.