I lay in the channel of sleep. Attached
to this world by nothing more than hope,
I turned in a current of dark dreams.
It was during this time the weather
underwent a metamorphosis.
Became deranged. What before had been
vile and shabby, but comprehensible,
became swollen and
unrecognizable. Something utterly vicious.
In my despairing mood, I didn’t
need it. It was the last thing on earth
I wanted. So with all the power I could muster,
I sent it packing. Sent it down the coast
to a big river I know about. A river
able to deal with foul weather
like this. So what if the river has to flee
to higher ground? Give it a few days.
It’ll find its way.
Then all will be as before. I swear
this won’t be more than a bad memory, if that.
Why, this time next week I won’t remember
what I was feeling when I wrote this.
I’ll have forgotten I slept badly
and dreamed for a time this evening…
to wake at seven o’clock, look out
at the storm and, after that first shock —
take heart. Think long and hard
about what I want, what I could let go
or send away. And then do it!
Like that. With words, and signs.
From the East, Light
The house rocked and shouted all night.
Toward morning, grew quiet. The children,
looking for something to eat, make
their way through the crazy living room
in order to get to the crazy kitchen.
There’s Father, asleep on the couch.
Sure they stop to look. Who wouldn’t?
They listen to his violent snores
and understand that the old way of life
has begun once more. So what else is new?
But the real shocker, what makes them stare,
is that their Christmas tree has been turned over.
It lies on its side in front of the fireplace.
The tree they helped decorate.
It’s wrecked now, icicles and candy canes
litter the rug. How’d a thing like this happen, anyway?
And they see Father has opened
his present from Mother. It’s a length of rope
half-in, half-out of its pretty box.
Let them both go hang
themselves, is what they’d like to say.
To hell with it, and
them, is what they’re thinking. Meanwhile,
there’s cereal in the cupboard, milk
in the fridge. They take their bowls
in where the TV is, find their show,
try to forget about the mess everywhere.
Up goes the volume. Louder, and then louder.
Father turns over and groans. The children laugh.
They turn it up some more so he’ll for sure know
he’s alive. He raises his head. Morning begins.
A Tall Order
This old woman who kept house for them,
she’d seen and heard the most amazing things.
Sights like plates and bottles flying.
An ashtray traveling like a missile
that hit the dog in the head.
Once she let herself in and found a huge
salad in the middle of the dining-room table.
It was sprinkled with moldy croutons.
The table was set for six, but nobody
had eaten. Dust filmed the cups and silver.
Upstairs a man pleaded
not to have his hair pulled by the roots again.
Please, please, please he cried.
Her job was to set the house in order.
At least make it like she’d left it last time.
That was all. Nobody asked her opinion,
and she didn’t give it. She put on her apron.
Turned the hot water on full, drowning out
that other sound. Her arms went into the suds
to her elbows. She leaned on the counter.
And stared into the backyard where they kept
the rusty swing and jungle-gym set.
If she kept watching, she was sure to see
the elephant step out of the trees and trumpet
as it did every Monday at this house, at this hour.
The Author of Her Misfortune
For the world is the world…
And it writes no histories
— STEPHEN SPENDER
I’m not the man she claims. But
this much is true: the past is
distant, a receding coastline,
and we’re all in the same boat,
a scrim of rain over the sea-lanes.
Still, I wish she wouldn’t keep on
saying those things about me!
Over the long course
everything but hope lets you go, then
even that loosens its grip.
There isn’t enough of anything
as long as we live. But at intervals
a sweetness appears and, given a chance,
prevails. It’s true I’m happy now.
And it’d be nice if she
could hold her tongue. Stop
hating me for being happy.
Blaming me for her life. I’m afraid
I’m mixed up in her mind
with someone else. A young man
of no character, living on dreams,
who swore he’d love her forever.
One who gave her a ring, and a bracelet.
Who said, Come with me. You can trust me.
Things to that effect. I’m not that man.
She has me confused, as I said,
with someone else.
Powder-Monkey
When my friend John Dugan, the carpenter,
left this world for the next, he seemed
in a terrible hurry. He wasn’t, of course.
Almost no one is. But he barely took time
to say goodbye. “I’ll just put these tools away,”
he said. Then, “So long.” And hurried
down the hill to his pickup. He waved, and
I waved. But between here and Dungeness,
where he used to live, he drifted
over the center line, onto Death’s side.
And was destroyed by a logging truck.
He is working
under the sun with his shirt off, a blue
bandanna around his forehead to keep sweat from his eyes.
Driving nails. Drilling and planing lumber.
Joining wood together with other wood.
In every way taking the measure of this house.
Stopping to tell a story now and then,
about when he was a young squirt, working
as a powder-monkey. The close calls he’d had
laying fuses. His white teeth flashing when he laughs.
The blond handlebar mustache he loved to
pull on while musing. “So long,” he said.
I want to imagine him riding unharmed
toward Death. Even though the fuse is burning.
Nothing to do there in the cab
of his pickup but listen to Ricky Skaggs,
pull on his mustache, and plan Saturday night.
This man with all Death before him.
Riding unharmed, and untouched,
toward Death.
Earwigs
FOR MONA SIMPSON
Your delicious-looking rum cake, covered with
almonds, was hand-carried to my door
this morning. The driver parked at the foot
of the hill, and climbed the steep path.
Nothing else moved in that frozen landscape
.
It was cold inside and out. I signed
for it, thanked him, went back in.
Where I stripped off the heavy tape, tore
the staples from the bag, and inside
found the canister you’d filled with cake.
I scratched adhesive from the lid.
Prized it open. Folded back the aluminum foil.
To catch the first whiff of that sweetness!
It was then the earwig appeared
from the moist depths. An earwig
stuffed on your cake. Drunk
from it. He went over the side of the can.
Scurried wildly across the table to take
refuge in the fruit bowl. I didn’t kill it.
Not then. Filled as I was with conflicting
feelings. Disgust, of course. But
amazement. Even admiration. This creature
that’d just made a 3,000-mile, overnight trip
by air, surrounded by cake, shaved almonds,
and the overpowering odor of rum. Carried
then in a truck over a mountain road and
packed uphill in freezing weather to a house
overlooking the Pacific Ocean. An earwig.
I’ll let him live, I thought. What’s one more,
or less, in the world? This one’s special,
maybe. Blessings on its strange head.
I lifted the cake from its foil wrapping
and three more earwigs went over the side
of the can! For a minute I was so taken
aback I didn’t know if I should kill them,
or what. Then rage seized me, and
I plastered them. Crushed the life from them
before any could get away. It was a massacre.
While I was at it, I found and destroyed
the other one utterly.
I was just beginning when it was all over.
I’m saying I could have gone on and on,
rending them. If it’s true
that man is wolf to man, what can mere earwigs
expect when bloodlust is up?
I sat down, trying to quieten my heart.
Breath rushing from my nose. I looked
around the table, slowly. Ready
for anything. Mona, I’m sorry to say this,
but I couldn’t eat any of your cake.
I’ve put it away for later, maybe.
Anyway, thanks. You’re sweet to remember
me out here alone this winter.
Living alone.
Like an animal, I think.
NyQuil
Call it iron discipline. But for months
I never took my first drink
before eleven p.m. Not so bad,
considering. This was in the beginning
phase of things. I knew a man
whose drink of choice was Listerine.
He was coming down off Scotch.
He bought Listerine by the case,
and drank it by the case. The back seat
of his car was piled high with dead soldiers.
Those empty bottles of Listerine
gleaming in his scalding back seat!
The sight of it sent me home soul-searching.
I did that once or twice. Everybody does.
Go way down inside and look around.
I spent hours there, but
didn’t meet anyone, or see anything
of interest. I came back to the here and now,
and put on my slippers. Fixed
myself a nice glass of NyQuil.
Dragged a chair over to the window.
Where I watched a pale moon struggle to rise
over Cupertino, California.
I waited through hours of darkness with NyQuil.
And then, sweet Jesus! the first sliver
of light.
The Possible
I spent years, on and off, in academe.
Taught at places I couldn’t get near
as a student. But never wrote a line
about that time. Never. Nothing stayed
with me in those days. I was a stranger,
and an impostor, even to myself. Except
at that one school. That distinguished
institution in the midwest. Where
my only friend, and my colleague,
the Chaucerian, was arrested for beating his wife.
And threatening her life over the phone,
a misdemeanor. He wanted to put her eyes out.
Set her on fire for cheating.
The guy she was seeing, he was going to hammer him
into the ground like a fence post.
He lost his mind for a time, while she moved away
to a new life. Thereafter, he taught
his classes weeping drunk. More than once
wore his lunch on his shirt front.
I was no help. I was fading fast myself.
But seeing the way he was living, so to speak,
I understood I hadn’t strayed so far from home
after all. My scholar-friend. My old pal.
At long last I’m out of all that.
And you. I pray your hands are steady,
and that you’re happy tonight. I hope some woman
has just put her hand under your clean collar
a minute ago, and told you she loves you.
Believe her, if you can, for it’s possible she means it.
Is someone who will be true, and kind to you.
All your remaining days.
Shiftless
The people who were better than us were comfortable.
They lived in painted houses with flush toilets.
Drove cars whose year and make were recognizable.
The ones worse off were sorry and didn’t work.
Their strange cars sat on blocks in dusty yards.
The years go by and everything and everyone
gets replaced. But this much is still true —
I never liked work. My goal was always
to be shiftless. I saw the merit in that.
I liked the idea of sitting in a chair
in front of your house for hours, doing nothing
but wearing a hat and drinking cola.
What’s wrong with that?
Drawing on a cigarette from time to time.
Spitting. Making things out of wood with a knife.
Where’s the harm there? Now and then calling
the dogs to hunt rabbits. Try it sometime.
Once in a while hailing a fat, blond kid like me
and saying, “Don’t I know you?”
Not, “What are you going to be when you grow up?”
The Young Fire Eaters of Mexico City
They fill their mouths with alcohol
and blow it over a lighted candle
at traffic signs. Anyplace, really,
where cars line up and the drivers
are angry and frustrated and looking
for distraction—there you’ll find
the young fire eaters. Doing what they do
for a few pesos. If they’re lucky.
But in a year their lips
are scorched and their throats raw.
They have no voice within a year.
They can’t talk or cry out —
these silent children who hunt
through the streets with a candle
and a beer can filled with alcohol.
They are called milusos. Which translates
into “a thousand uses.”
Where the Groceries Went
When his mother called for the second time
that day, she said:
“I don’t have any strength left. I want
to lay down all the time.”
“Did you take your iron?” he wanted to know.
He sincerely wanted to know. Praying daily,
hopelessly, that iron might make a difference.
“Yes, but it just makes me hungry. And I don’t
have anything to eat.”
He pointed out to her they’d shopped
for hours that morning. Brought home
eighty dollars’ worth of food to stack
in her cupboards and the fridge.
“There’s nothing to eat in this goddamn house
but baloney and cheese,” she said.
Her voice shook with anger. “Nothing!”
“And how’s your cat? How’s Kitty doing?”
His own voice shook. He needed
to get off this subject of food; it never
brought them anything but grief.
“Kitty,” his mother said. “Here, Kitty.
Kitty, Kitty. She won’t answer me, honey.
I don’t know this for sure, but I think
she jumped into the washing machine
when I was about to do a load. And before I forget,
that machine’s making
a banging noise. I think there’s something
the matter with it. Kitty! She won’t
answer me. Honey, I’m afraid.
I’m afraid of everything. Help me, please.
Then you can go back to whatever it was
you were doing. Whatever
it was that was so important
I had to take the trouble
to bring you into this world.”
What I Can Do
All I want today is to keep an eye on these birds
outside my window. The phone is unplugged
so my loved ones can’t reach out and put the arm
on me. I’ve told them the well has run dry.
They won’t hear of it. They keep trying
to get through anyway. Just now I can’t bear to know
about the car that blew another gasket.
Or the trailer I thought I’d paid for long ago,
now foreclosed on. Or the son in Italy
who threatens to end his life there
unless I keep paying the bills. My mother wants
to talk to me too. Wants to remind me again how it was
back then. All the milk I drank, cradled in her arms.
That ought to be worth something now. She needs
me to pay for this new move of hers. She’d like
to loop back to Sacramento for the twentieth time.
Everybody’s luck has gone south. All I ask
is to be allowed to sit for a moment longer.