All of Us (24 page)

I drop the phone and pass my hand

across my face. I close and open the door.

The couple in the sedan roll

their windows down and

watch, their tears stilled

for a moment in the face of this distraction.

Then they roll their windows up

and sit behind the glass. We

don’t go anywhere for a while.

And then we go.

New snow onto old ice last night. Now,

errand-bound to town, preoccupied with the mudge

in his head, he applied his brakes too fast.

And found himself in a big car out of control,

moving broadside down the road in the immense

stillness of the winter morning. Headed

inexorably for the intersection.

The things that were passing through his mind?

The news film on TV of three alley cats

and a rhesus monkey with electrodes implanted

in their skulls; the time he stopped to photograph

a buffalo near where the Little Big Horn

joined the Big Horn; his new graphite rod

with the Limited Lifetime Warranty;

the polyps the doctor’d found on his bowel;

the Bukowski line that flew

through his mind from time to time:

We’d all like to pass by in a 1995 Cadillac.

His head a hive of arcane activity.

Even during the time it took his car

to slide around on the highway and point him

back in the direction he’d come from.

The direction of home, and relative security.

The engine was dead. The immense stillness

descended once more. He took off his woolen cap

and wiped his forehead. But after a moment’s

consideration, started his car, turned around

and continued on into town.

More carefully, yes. But thinking all the while

along the same lines as before. Old ice, new snow.

Cats. A monkey. Fishing. Wild buffalo.

The sheer poetry in musing on Cadillacs

that haven’t been built yet. The chastening effect

of the doctor’s fingers.

A break in the clouds. The blue

outline of the mountains.

Dark yellow of the fields.

Black river. What am I doing here,

lonely and filled with remorse?

I go on casually eating from the bowl

of raspberries. If I were dead,

I remind myself, I wouldn’t

be eating them. It’s not so simple.

It is that simple.

I woke up with a spot of blood

over my eye. A scratch

halfway across my forehead. But

I’m sleeping alone these days.

Why on earth would a man raise his hand

against himself, even in sleep?

It’s this and similar questions

I’m trying to answer this morning.

As I study my face in the window.

My mother calls to wish me a Merry Christmas.

And to tell me if this snow keeps on

she intends to kill herself. I want to say

I’m not myself this morning, please

give me a break. I may have to borrow a psychiatrist

again. The one who always asks me the most fertile

of questions, “But what are you
really
feeling?”

Instead, I tell her one of our skylights

has a leak. While I’m talking, the snow is

melting onto the couch. I say I’ve switched to All-Bran

so there’s no need to worry any longer

about me getting cancer, and her money coming to an end.

She hears me out. Then informs me

she’s leaving
this goddamn place.
Somehow. The only time

she wants to see it, or me again, is from her coffin.

Suddenly, I ask if she remembers the time Dad

was dead drunk and bobbed the tail of the Labrador pup.

I go on like this for a while, talking about

those days. She listens, waiting her turn.

It continues to snow. It snows and snows

as I hang on the phone. The trees and rooftops

are covered with it. How can I talk about this?

How can I possibly explain what I’m feeling?

Seeing the child again.

Not having seen him

for six months. His face

seems broader than last time.

Heavier. Almost coarse.

More like his father’s now.

Devoid of mirth. The eyes

narrowed and without

expression. Don’t expect

gentleness or pity

from this child, now or ever.

There’s something rough,

even cruel, in the grasp

of his small hand.

I turn him loose.

His shoes scuff against

each other as he makes for the door.

As it opens. As he gives his cry.

The worms crawl in
,

the worms crawl out.

The worms play pinochle

in your snout.

—
CHILDHOOD DITTY

I was nearsighted and had to get up close

so I could see it in the first place: the earth

that’d been torn with a disk or plow.

But I could smell it, and I didn’t like it.

To me it was gruesome, suggesting death

and the grave. I was running once and fell

and came up with a mouthful. That

was enough to make me want to keep my distance

from fields just after they’d been sliced open

to expose whatever lay teeming underneath.

And I never cared anything for gardens, either.

Those over-ripe flowers in summer bloom.

Or spuds lying just under the surface

with only part of their faces showing.

Those places I shied away from, too. Even today

I can do without a garden. But something’s changed.

There’s nothing I like better now than to walk into

a freshly turned field and kneel and let the soft dirt

slide through my fingers. I’m lucky to live

close to the fields I’m talking about.

I’ve even made friends with some of the farmers.

The same men who used to strike me

as unfriendly and sinister.

So what if the worms come sooner or later?

And what’s it matter if the winter snow piles up

higher than fences, then melts and drains away

deep into the earth to water what’s left of us?

It’s okay. Quite a lot was accomplished here, after all.

I gambled and lost, sure. Then gambled some more,

and won. My eyesight is failing. But if I move

up close and look carefully, I can see all kinds of life

in the earth. Not just worms, but beetles, ants, ladybugs.

Things like that. I’m gladdened, not concerned with the sight.

It’s nice to walk out into a field any day

that I want and not feel afraid. I love to reach

down and bring a handful of dirt right up under my nose.

And I can push with my feet and feel the earth give

under my shoes. I can stand there quietly

under the great balanced sky, motionless.

With this impulse to take off my shoes.

But just an impulse. More important,

this not moving. And then

Amazing! to walk that opened field —

and keep walking.

I went out for a minute and

left your book on the table.

Something came up. Next morning,

at a quarter to six,

dawn began. Men had already

gone into the fields to work.

Windrows of leaves lay

alongside the track.

Reminding me of fall.

I turned to the first page

and began to read.

I spent the entire morning

in your company, in Aix,

in the South of France.

When I looked up,

it was twelve o’clock.

And they all said I’d never find a place

for myself in this life!

Said I’d never be happy,

not in this world, or the next.

That’s how much they knew.

Those dopes.

I fished alone that languid autumn evening.

Fished as darkness kept coming on.

Experiencing exceptional loss and then

exceptional joy when I brought a silver salmon

to the boat, and dipped a net under the fish.

Secret heart! When I looked into the moving water

and up at the dark outline of the mountains

behind the town, nothing hinted then

I would suffer so this longing

to be back once more, before I die.

Far from everything, and far from myself.

Clouds hang loosely over this mountain range

behind my house. In a while, the light

will go and the wind come up

to scatter these clouds, or some others,

across the sky.

                         I drop to my knees,

roll the big salmon onto its side

on the wet grass, and begin to use

the knife I was born with. Soon

I’ll be at the table in the living room,

trying to raise the dead. The moon

and the dark water my companions.

My hands are silvery with scales.

Fingers mingling with the dark blood.

Finally, I cut loose the massive head.

I bury what needs burying

and keep the rest. Take one last look

at the high blue light. Turn

toward my house. My night.

The four of us sitting around that afternoon.

Caroline telling her dream. How she woke up

barking
this one night. And found her little dog,

Teddy, beside the bed, watching.

The man who was her husband at the time

watched too as she told of the dream.

Listened carefully. Even smiled. But

there was something in his eyes. A way

of looking, and a look. We’ve all had
it…

Already he was in love with a woman

named Jane, though this is no judgment

on him, or Jane, or anyone else. Everyone went on

to tell a dream. I didn’t have any.

I looked at your feet, tucked up on the sofa,

in slippers. All I could think to say,

but didn’t, was how those slippers were still warm

one night when I picked them up

where you’d left them. I put them beside the bed.

But a quilt fell and covered them

during the night. Next morning, you looked

everywhere for them. Then called downstairs,

“I found my slippers!” This is a small thing,

I know, and between us. Nevertheless,

it has moment. Those lost slippers. And

that cry of delight.

It’s okay that this happened

a year or more ago. It could’ve been

yesterday, or the day before. What difference?

Delight, and a cry.

It’s good to live near the water.

Ships pass so close to land

a man could reach out

and break a branch from one of the willow trees

that grow here. Horses run wild

down by the water, along the beach.

If the men on board wanted, they could

fashion a lariat and throw it

and bring one of the horses on deck.

Something to keep them company

for the long journey East.

From my balcony I can read the faces

of the men as they stare at the horses,

the trees, and two-story houses.

I know what they’re thinking

when they see a man waving from a balcony,

his red car in the drive below.

They look at him and consider themselves

lucky. What a mysterious piece

of good fortune, they think, that’s brought

them all this way to the deck of a ship

bound for Asia. Those years of doing odd jobs,

or working in warehouses, or longshoring,

or simply hanging out on the docks,

are forgotten about. Those things happened

to other, younger men,

if they happened at all.

                         The men on board

raise their arms and wave back.

Then stand still, gripping the rail,

as the ship glides past. The horses

move from under the trees and into the sun.

They stand like statues of horses.

Watching the ship as it passes.

Waves breaking against the ship.

Against the beach. And in the mind

of the horses, where

it is always Asia.

Snow began falling late last night. Wet flakes

dropping past windows, snow covering

the skylights. We watched for a time, surprised

and happy. Glad to be here, and nowhere else.

I loaded up the wood stove. Adjusted the flue.

We went to bed, where I closed my eyes at once.

But for some reason, before falling asleep,

I recalled the scene at the airport

in Buenos Aires the evening we left.

How still and deserted the place seemed!

Dead quiet except the sound of our engines

as we backed away from the gate and

taxied slowly down the runway in a light snow.

The windows in the terminal building dark.

No one in evidence, not even a ground crew. “It’s as if

the whole place is in mourning,” you said.

I opened my eyes. Your breathing said

you were fast asleep. I covered you with an arm

and went on from Argentina to recall a place

I lived in once in Palo Alto. No snow in Palo Alto.

But I had a room and two windows looking onto the

Bayshore Freeway.

The refrigerator stood next to the bed.

When I became dehydrated in the middle of the night,

all I had to do to slake that thirst was reach out

and open the door. The light inside showed the way

to a bottle of cold water. A hot plate

sat in the bathroom close to the sink.

When I shaved, the pan of water bubbled

on the coil next to the jar of coffee granules.