Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.
Northeast Kingdom
by Elizabeth Gauffreau
On Saturdays my brother tours the Spanish missions
A Vermont Yankee in Mendicino County
I leave for the Northeast Kingdom
Poised to crest the last hill
Clatter across the last set of railroad tracks
Swoop past the Moosehead Bar and Grill
Past faded paint, boarded windows, listing porch
Past stories of French-Canadian loggers as legendary as Charlemagne
A quick stop for gas at Debanville's Store
Smell oiled wood floors, leather, raw meat
Through muted summer sun
Nothing has changed
A winding, narrow road, pastures on either side
The same white farmhouses, the same plain barns
The road to Paul Stream is unpaved
Dusty, rutted, glorious washboard
I drive as fast over it
As the first summer I had my license
And my brother sat enviously beside me
The car jerking and sliding and rattling
The camp is square and yellow
Its stovepipe straight and clean
I slam the car door and run across the road
Slow on the drainage ditch bridge
Hollow thudding of sneakers on wood
Down the narrow path
Nimble hopping over roots
To steps, to porch, to inside smell of woodbin and mice
I sit on my brother's cot
Bounce the springs
Scan his bookshelf
Open the book to the plans for the raft
He was going to build for me
The plans still look simple
Straight logs lashed together
A mast and a sail
And we could float down Paul Stream
In the sun and never come back
Originally published in The Larcom Review.
Elizabeth Gauffreau holds a BA in English/Creative Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines, as well as several themed anthologies. Her short story “Henrietta’s Saving Grace” was awarded the 2022 Ben Nyberg prize for fiction by Choeofpleirn Press. She has published a novel, Telling Sonny, and two photopoetry collections, Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance and Simple Pleasures: Haiku from the Place Just Right. Her second novel, The Weight of Snow and Regret, will be published in October of 2025. Find her online at https://lizgauffreau.com
Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print
Previous Renaissance Poets
April Poets