This Way to the Acorns: Poems (The 10th Anniversary Edition)

By Raymond Luczak

As a boy growing up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Raymond Luczak delighted in the mysterious attractions of nature in a huge expanse of abandoned woods and fields known as “across the street.” In This Way to the Acorns, he remembers encountering unexpected guests of the woods: a scraggly fox, a starving doe, an industrious chipmunk, all enveloped against the backdrop of nature. If he remembers the first shimmers of spring, he does not forget the stark reality of death, or, ultimately, the forgiving power of the seasons.

“When we are young, the natural world is full of magic. But this wide-eyed wonder is educated out of us; schooled out with textbooks, drowned out with cell phones. Luckily for us, Luczak remembers the magic, and in This Way to the Acorns, he brings us back to childhood’s awe at the simplest things: the first snowfall, a strong wind, a fox on the hunt for food. These are the spirits Walt Whitman would have us honor. I haven’t thought of the willow tree in my grandmother’s backyard in years. Today, I did.” -- Bryan Borland, author of My Life as Adam

“In exploring the metaphors of nature and using them to give us these delectable snapshots of his childhood and siblings, Luczak reminds us that unexpected beauty lies around the corner of each leaf, each tree, each snowfall. In precise lines of magnificent poetry, he takes us into a world we gladly wish to inhabit. This Way to the Acorns remains one of the top five books on my upper shelf, always within easy reach. Its republication is a gift, indeed, as is the delight to be found in his work.” -- Pia Taavila, author of Moon on the Meadow: Collected Poems

“. . . a book of such grace and grave joy that I think must be read. How simple, modest, true each poem is. I shall love having it by my side. It gives me joy. ‘The First Snow,’ ‘Darkly Went the Wind,’ ‘Under a New Moon’: they bring the world close to my flesh, to my mind. This book is a blessing.” -- Ned O’Gorman, author of Five Seasons of Obsessions: New and Selected Poems

• Language: English
• Publisher: Handtype Press
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301116607

Raymond Luczak

Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of twenty books. Titles include The Kinda Fella I Am: Stories and QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology. His Deaf gay novel Men with Their Hands won first place in the Project: QueerLit Contest 2006. His work has been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He can be found online at raymondluczak.com.

Book preview

ACORNS I

At Spruce and Oak Streets

they are sleeping.

Their knit caps have been pulled

snugly over their ears.

Their cheeks are a rose brown,

frozen numb under inches and

inches of calming snow.

But then they feel the

sudden pressure

of a boy’s snowmobile boots

across the layers above.

They awake, alarmed,

but remember that in spring

the garrulous soil will weaken,

adopt them as their own.

They dream of sprouting green,

taking a firmer stance

against the tiring seasons.

* * *

THE FIRST SNOW

I woke up and found the sudden snow:

a white fur lining to everything

in the backyard, the sideyard, the front. Snow,

I shouted. We got our first snow!

I ate my Cream of Wheat, and dried my hands

before I struggled to tuck my navy blue snow-

suit into boots. We waddled out on the snow,

crisscrossing the sidewalks and looking behind

for the crumbs of snow falling off behind

our feet. Patches of wet gleamed in the snow-

covered sidewalks. Andra stood in the sideyard

and yelled, How come no snowman in the sideyard?

We scrambled all over to the sideyard

and began. I scooped up a sludge of snow

with my mittens, and rolled it through the sideyard

to make it even bigger. The white sideyard

was a blanket of lint, latching onto everything

it came in touch with. The sideyard’s

brown grasses underneath made the sideyard

a tattered banner to summers gone past. My hands

smoothed the rough clumps of my ball flat; my hands

felt hot inside my mittens. Toward the sideyard’s

center David and Joe were now pushing behind

their huge ball, now the snowman’s fat behind.

Mary brushed off lintballs of grasses off its behind

while Jean waved Carole to come across the sideyard.

We all looked up when Mom waved to us behind

the kitchen window, and continued pushing behind

Jean and Carole’s oval ball of snow,

and it took, finally, four of us to pull it behind

the snowman. Mark, David, and Joe laughed at its behind

and boobs until Carole hacked off those things.

(It did seem, though, she’d ruined everything

until Mark pushed his knee in to make a cleft in the behind.)

I rolled my ball a bit more, and lifted with my hands

to see how heavy it was. I waved Kevin over with my hands.

He carried his tiny ball, and with my hands

I smashed it flat all over my ball. Maryfrom behind

the snowmanpointed to us with her hand

and said, Look! We got a head now! With my hands

I heaved it up to my waist. The sideyard’s

center seemed a long distance, what with my hands

buckling under the weight, almost slipping under my hands.

As I tried to roll it up higher, the snow

fell apart like dry cookie batter. Jean said, Oh,

we can still use it, and pushed with her hands

the broken chunks together. Now we have everything.

Then David said, A snowman’s not everything

if he can’t smile. So looking under everything

where the snow had covered, we found with our hands

nine pebbles, one tooth for each of us. Everything

looked done until Andra said, He don’t have everything.

Where’s his hat? I ran into the house, the door behind

me banging shut. I yelled, Mom! You have anything

he can wear? I flew out with a hunter’s capthat thing

now stood out in the white grayness of the sideyard.

The snowman now smiled under his brim-halo in the sideyard.

Mark tromped back across the street and said, One more