The Traitor
sometimes in the bleak tangle of the evening
I will mute the television and watch the news
in silence, listen to the cars passing by in the
night, the house too close to the road but not
too close to all the bombing and cheating and
oil spills and threadbare calamity seeping into
the airwaves like radiation poison—no, not here
so far from the lights of town, where the hum
of the night creatures ebb from the trees and
the cedar swamp, the liminal infinity of night
and flora edging closer, trying to reclaim the
ground it has lost against the tide of humanity
and when I turn the television off, the darkness
gains a bit more ground, the natural world a little
bit stronger in the twilight, and I’m satisfied, a
traitor against my kind, a double agent living
in one world while hoping another’s counter-
attack will be swift, sweeping through the trees
to bring all of our flagellations to a quiet end
About the Author: James H Duncan is the editor of Hobo Camp Review and author of Cistern Latitudes, Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line, and Vacancy, among other books of poetry and fiction. He also writes reviews of indie bookstores at his blog, The Bookshop Hunter. For more visit, www.jameshduncan.com.
Image Credit: Harris & Ewing, photographer “Looking up at the antenna mast in the rear of the precinct station.” (1938) Public domain photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 