The Troll At The Toll Poem by Robert Dawson

The Troll at the Toll

1. 'And if it wasn't 35 in '52,
Old whipper-snapper, you
Will not deny in ‘36
The gruffest goat could cross on sticks
By any Ford not of Detroit - '
' ‘Twas 60 cints in '38. It hain't
Bin less since, it hain't likely to.'
So the old-fangled gent, and blew
His fingers through our glass for rates
Not meager for a toll bridge minus gates.
'If you could wait till our back seat
Arrives, you'll find a billy goat,
Twould make the two of us look thin.'
But Sidney kept his sleep beyond the din,
His curly horns, that is, tucked in.

2. Just where the map folds under,
Iowa sets up a tiny thunder.
Eyelids crumble like soggy tinder.
Missouri promises twelve-gallon slumber.

The scuffle of frogs that grease this rainy lane
‘Sa surface that a dream might skid upon.
The frogs loop up from the fields.
My dream suckles down through years
To that one exceptional frog. 'Oh prince, '
I harken, 'Lift up thy face from brocaded slime!
My golden ball … ' is thoroughly lost. I start
To horse-haired cushions, rattle and stoop -
My bridled aunt says there's a troll
In every cellar but her own, but Jimmy tells
Me, Mother tells him too. The drift is clear:
Macadam, gun-gray as the tunny's belt,
Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden Gate.
'If you'll but wait, ' (Van Winkle to the toll)
'There comes a sleeper sleepier than I.' Listen!
The miles a hurdy-gurdy grinds, past thorny castles
Unto naked rinds. But here's this frog, what is
This frog, that simpers in her gaze? Van Winkle dies
In the attempt. Drop him! Try tailors!
Seven trolls by one frog-coated tailor
Slain! They pus the highway with their many legs.
Macadam, frog-green as princesses' hair,
Hops the Missouri with a night-blind stare.
The last ride of my nightmare aunt, shot
Belching in the jelly shelves. 'You're fat,
Fat enough! ' the toll troll cries, 'You'll never be
Fatter if your stomach match your eyes.'

I lift my facial scratch … a stoplight and
An unhitched truck to watch. The
Lights blink. The cab is rubbing gears.
The rain stops while I dream down to tears.
My cousin Jimmy, on the farm one day,
Stepped on a frog. I made him pay.
His freckles ganged up in a grin.
I hit him in the chin.
My aunt came up behind
And shook me by the mind.

3. Who am I?
Am I he that rides beside me?
There is a mingling in our velocity.
'Ancestors!
You whose absence prickles
Like the dark inside a glove!
You were not with me on the gravel,
That midnight when the nap came off the world!

Take off the skins, you fogies!
Stop munching those locusts!
My Christ hung shiny in the showroom
Will never drag with your disdainful John!
Don't haggle in this game of changing focus!
The frost is on the nudnic! God is Love.
Cameradoes! I speak as a fleshpot.
Perhaps there is still time to fatten new ribs.
Perhaps the ultimate poem is now being
Written in a drive-in. In the west a screen is flashing
like Walt Whitman groping up a muddy drive.
He is singing and chanting the things that are part of him.
His beard is high combustion and his staff is a custom cam.'

4. Trollology
'That yellow fleck, Li Po my chum,
Which to you seemed so embraceable
That you cast your robes on the river's floor,
Is merely the hump of an aged troll.'

'How inelegant are the trolls -
No dimples, manners, souls,
Only carbuncles and jowls! '

'Although the troll is not generally herbaceous,
his weedy flanks and mossy jaws would indicate
a possible supply of top-grade commercial
chlorophyll.'

'Sixteen trolls, on a spree one night,
Went to Duluth to get in a fight.
They would have won too, but got in the way
Of an old Christian lady from the Sons of Norway.'

'Oh Baby, your eyes are loose
And your sweater and your dress
Are just the fragrance I'd inhale.
But three days' filth is on my lip …
Ah, worms or weariness pierce the hip.
This flesh of home I, coming, going,
Will nor sate nor sing: a sleeping troll
Is worth two in the bush.'

5. Nebraska gets ahead of us as we drive.
Some troll is winding the other end of it!
Another rides our running board, and he
Is shooting silent birds with silent shells.
Dead wings flock down on us. Rabbits march across;
Each one carries a hurt smile. They reel us in,
The trolls, but take a damn fool's time with it.
Then, like slightly frozen fountains, auto after auto
Bleeds a limb. Green, white, pale green, yellow
Flashers flee with visions of collision.
Our wheels are spinning, spinning, but we stop.

Stout oaks that stir the wind up with their leaves
Sing 'Stop and see! Stop with me!
Let acorns push their fingers through your hair.
Starlings nest in us. Thou shalt be one of us
And dance with farting fairies in the air! '

Moonlight and falling leaves are one.
Moonlight, ripples, and falling leaves
Are one. The River dips south under our weight. Three
Fat men on the Platte. 'Shall it be flesh or foible, '
Squall the trolls, 'You'll do. You'll do. Who'd
Wait for fatter fat? '
The turtle carries his coffin on his back,
But I remember, back of Stern's Garage one day
My father taught me clutch and shift
With coffin cuffs. I didn't stay
To see the last car driven,
That Sunday when he won six of eleven.

Nebraska gets ahead of us as we drive.
In Fremont, Kearny, Ogallala, Platte,
I shout to keep myself awake:
'If this is Potter, where's the pot? '

6. Oh, all below is splice and tube
And all above is rhythm.
The Brothers Troll sing rock ‘n roll
While our rear tires get with ‘em.
'Then what about the summer, boys,
What about the summer? '
We'll sweat and spare our souls from books
And dread the hometown anecdotes.
'But what of graduation, lads,
What of graduation? '
The road shall be our Mecca town,
Our war, our tale of hearts, our heaven.

A car will be your coffin!
Now every mile must be swift and every shift
Must be precise. Can't pause
For sunrise at the Esso station.
Must prove the nation.

7. And if it wasn't 35 in '52,
Old troll, you needn't let us through.
We've had enough of driving westward now.

_____ for Arthur Morey & Sidney Goldfarb