For your enjoyment: “Accident” a poem by Todd Davis (and a writing exercise based on the poem)
Accident
by Todd Davis
They tell the son, who tells his friends
at school, that the father’s death was
an accident, that the rifle went off
while he was cleaning it. I’m not sure
why he couldn’t wait. We understand
the ones who decide to leave us in February,
even as late as March. Snows swell.
Sun disappears. Hunting season ends.
With two deer in the freezer and family
can survive. I know sometimes
it feels like you’ve come to the end
of something. Sometimes you just want
to sit down beneath a hemlock and never go
back. But this late in the year, when plum
trees have opened their blossoms?
Yesterday it was so warm we slept
with the windows open. Smell of forsythia
right there in the room. I swear
you could hear the last few flowers open,
silk petals come undone, a soft sound
like a pad sliding through a gun’s battle,
white cloth soaked in bore cleaner,
removing the leas, the copper, the carbon
that fouls everything. My son knows
you don’t die cleaning your rifle:
the chamber’s always open.
I told him to nod his head anyway
when his friend tells the story,
to say yes as many times as it takes,
to never forget the smell of smoke
and concrete, the little bit of light
one bulb gives off in a basement
with no windows.
This originally appeared in the Indiana Review Vol. 29 No. 1. I thoroughly enjoyed this poem, perhaps partly due to the fact I was raised in a deer hunting home in a deer hunting region, where occasionally a hunter had a ‘cleaning accident’ which could be possible if said hunter was a complete drunk, but… the imagery is great, and I especially loved the listing of suicide reasons, “Snows swell. / Sun disappears. / Hunting season ends” the plainspoken, staccato sentences really work well. The last image is a haunting one that I can just imagine the son’s poor friend stumbling upon after the ‘accident’ and it makes me muy triste.
Use this poem as a springboard for a poem of your own, now. Think of a lie that people just ‘nod along’ with. This is especially true when dealing with children (Santa, dog ran away etc) but also guys brag about things they’ve never done, people lie about their jobs when they run into people from high school ten years later, there’re plenty of major, and not so major lies that happen all the time. Pick one, and come up with a short narrative about it. Why you (or your character) just go along with something they/you know isn’t true. And end your poem with an image.