Flow Chart: A Poem (14 page)

once we have penetrated it successfully, and all else has been laid to rest.

And the river threaded its way as best it could through sharp obstacles and was sometimes not there

and was triumphal for a few moments at the end. I put my youth and middle age into it,

and what else? Whatever happened to be around, at a given moment, for that is the best

we have; no one can refuse it, and, by the same token, everyone must accept it,

for it is like a kind of music that comes in sideways and afterwards you aren’t sure

if you heard it or not, but its effects will be noticed later on, perhaps in

people you never heard of, who migrated to other parts of the country

and established families and businesses there. Yet sometimes too it’d seem like a moraine,

filled with rocks and bloom, a mammoth postscript

to whatever you thought your life had been before.

At no time did the music seem remotely interesting. You must always keep listening, though,

otherwise you might miss out on something. And there is something lovely

about haunting voices filling the high vaults of a basilica:

just the idea that they want to sing leads to a fork in the path,

and that can never be used against you because there are already far too many old men

to count as a reproach, with downcast eyes,

following the path wherever it leads now. Besides, it’s impossible to be young enough

anyway, and the leaping intervals of the music don’t so much consecrate youthful hopefulness

as excuse the follies of old age, as, running around like chickens with our heads cut off,

we try to excommunicate everyone including ourselves from society: even the word “society”

is something each of us eventually gets a stranglehold on, forcing it to say “uncle”—there,

I’m glad I did, and you can go away now. Such are dried fruits, a pleasant treat

perhaps in some afternoon that can be, but as I sit here it doesn’t seem anything

can establish itself as the slab of meaning I feel central to my situation and all unwary,

unprepared to do anything. Looking out at the bay

one imagined one had seen it before.

Did I say that thing to you? I hope not—

but if I did, please forgive me—it wasn’t the real me, but in any case

we have to get on with our lives somewhat, make swift compromises

for all the world to see, and sparrows fly off, and it shall be as perhaps it was before

when night tickled the very notion of seeing without artificial light, and finally

it began to rain past thirst, past any notion of seedlings, of decay, of posterity

and protocol, wherever they have fled now. Beyond horses and the island.

It would all be just as you were going to have it in a moment. No boys unloaded then.

The poor sailor seeking the familiar is still lost, and no one appears to know

anything about our circumstances. At least until we have been coaxed past the limit

of civilized performance. All else fades. Here is my pen. I am resolved to write

no more, until this business be settled, one day or the other. Cancel all my appointments.

Remember to water the dieffenbachia. And please, curl your hair. It’s getting stretched-

looking. There are biscuits in a container under the counter. Otherwise, why

it’s plenty being out in the air and watching others run. Someone came down

from upstate to see me, and that was fine. We rummaged in drawers for a spell. My, how

that bush has grown. Aren’t you tempted too in the sweet part of the night

to give up your secret by whispering it and then roll over,

convinced nothing can ever repair the climate? And when, in the morning, everything

suddenly looks so frighteningly reassuring, and you automatically reach for the note

on the night table and find it gone, is this despair because it meshed better,

or is it all just animals in tall grasses, not so much as a sapling on the horizon,

that is one we have never seen before, though it all looks

like something I saw once in a waking dream, in Minnesota, perhaps? And you find you can’t

add any more; somebody starts to sympathize and that frightens you, you run away

for a while, then stop and rest,

because where could you get to, anyway? Only if
he
authorized it, which is unlikely,

will we ever see those towering organ-pipe cactuses like deco skyscrapers in a city

one always wanted to live in, but if he comes back maybe he’ll do something

about all the others who pestered an infant once, and, when it was time to go,

didn’t say they’d had a nice time or anything. If, indeed, I am findable under the lens

of this disinterested red-haired scientist, and if he is willing to exchange me for

a hostage, why then I will go, no question of it. If, however, it is only to force me

to “take my medicine,” then I’ll stay. It’s that simple. It’s decided. We

have no way of forcing others to cooperate except by vaguely acquiescing

to their most intimate desires and pretending we don’t know what it’s all about, what

we are doing, and who are they? I thought one was the milkman. But it doesn’t

matter because while still enrolled in a course at a local community college I happened

once to overhear a conversation between two boys in the next row of lockers, and it

sounded, well, suspicious. I thought I should tell somebody something, and ran out,

but the office was closed, although it was only a little after four, and a tremendous

black bruise stood up in the sky. This was definitely not something to kid about,

I thought as I ran the few blocks to a stationery store, which was closed too—damn!

No wonder kids can’t get their schoolwork done. And then I noticed every window in every

single-story house was like an eye with a trembling eyelid, and knew that the hour

had come to deliver my speech, and did, the gist of it being: where, assuming

it can be located at all, when you came from the well, gingerly

making your way along the low masonry wall in the side of the bluff, did you expect the others

to be, if not in the roofless enclosure they called a house and were planning to enlarge

someday? Why didn’t Dad reach for his shotgun then, instead

of putting some of them out of the house and grabbing the others and forcing them back

inside? Another roll of the glass paperweight and snow shoots up

out of the sagebrush, engulfing the bunkhouse: now see

here, is this what you ordered the man to be? Not if you have a warrant,

it isn’t, and can’t be exchanged or refunded, its name is a great hiss of waters

rolling toward, then past us. And just see how

the fire ants got washed away, in a red cloud on the surface of the billows,

their mandibles pawing the air pathetically, since after all it was the life force

that impelled them, as it does us, and now they are gone, and we have lasted

but are no better for it. Shit, let’s go home. I mean, I forgot my key.

And the road has no survivors. They are probably with him in the jeep up ahead.

One dives at one, then at another, asking, beseeching an explanation

that is not forthcoming. If they were my kids, I’d discipline them different

but nobody can predict, when the day’s work is done,

how much vomit would cover the stone surface and where you’d get ’em even if you had ’em.

Nice boys at school. It don’t do much to mess with the vegetation leastwise

when it clambers like this and could be leaves or part of a tree

or a house in a miniseries. Therefore all ends in disappointment. And if you did

good that’s fine, but if you did bad it don’t make no difference, you’re equal

same as the others, and the devil don’t give a shit who you are

or whether your name has an umlaut to it. But we can rest, smooth from the attack,

until wit returns, and you shine

the little copper ring and something good will come of it. Few, however,

were interested in doing so, because of having already done it, and nothing

behind them. One little scholar however did observe

how odd it was to see two people here—you see, no one told

us about other names being on the list. It was, in effect, highly unusual,

though no more so than circumstantial evidence or grass being covered up. Here

a moral dilemma socks one: is it better to remain single, conscious of the many

overlapping half-lives that with luck add up to one, or should

we be planted at many listening posts ready to radio vital information back to whoever

stands at the long bar? And will my genuine if respectful indifference militate

against the neutrality of my performance? Is a conflict of interest shaping up, or what?

Or will these woolly, ball-like constituents of my flock teeter

permanently on the edge of forgiveness, of having something to say

even when I’m down the fire stairs preparing to exit into the alley, before losing

myself in the turbid flood of passersby that wearily

accosts one in the major thoroughfare it empties into? People that look like the Gov and Min

in a more strained version: the colors are soiled even when the long coats are clean,

and move swiftly past to tea or some such tropical rendezvous.

They’ve had it with us, seems to be the universal psalm emanating from some debris’ psaltery:

and anyway, who dat man wid de fish? Is he the one who must drive death’s wagon for a year

until somebody else dies and has to take over the job? (And how spidery the
attelage
,

the incomplete wheels.) Oh we must be ever saying and sighing

until what’s-its-name gets you up there again, to turn the ever-accomplished phrases

once more and file out having been paid; then there’s an argument, a stout middle-aged woman accuses a

weasely person of trying to grab her handbag and all hell breaks loose:

fat Irish policemen in outdated uniforms frantically blow on tin whistles until

a phantom paddy wagon drawn by six slavering horses careens down the narrow, muddied street.

It’s all over for today; you can go home. Wait, the woman

still wants to know about her change purse; it wasn’t in the retrieved handbag.

Things go from bad to worse; it sickens one when one

thinks about it for a second; yet having to explain to one’s kindly interlocutor

that it’s the crisis of humanity, not this isolated incident, is a fate worse than death,

almost. Here, we can duck into this café. You’ll feel better

in a moment, but it’s best not to take these things too seriously,

not be so thin-skinned. Honest. A rose is blowing over there. The baker comes out of his shop

and smiles, rubbing his hands on his floury apron, and the wind

picked up the veil off that woman’s face and revealed her beauty

before she hastily jammed the hat down over her forehead and trotted swiftly off.

O my fellow members in the secret society, do you see what secrecy has brought us to,

do you know that shad are running in the river, that dams are collapsing in Italy,

and about other fields of interest? For me, it’s not so much enough that someone brought me

here to my senses, as that the recent past is almost dead, that some other

people, though no officials, have struggled to greet me despite the dust storm’s

increased severity, that no tax can ever be legitimately imposed on this period

of my uncertainty, that a score of bloopers hasn’t imperiled my career—yet.

And that these elements combine thrillingly, almost diabolically, to

disarm the cryptogram, making us all well again in each other’s arms, for as long

as one fancies time or happiness endures—check one. Well I see I’ve

not outstayed my welcome, that on the contrary quite a few people are waiting

in the anteroom to shake my hand. And with this reassurance, nothing ever quite seems

complete again. Yet it isn’t exasperating. No furniture-bashing please.

And as we congregate this way, the actual lists of heaven seem roseate

anew. Flames lick the pulpit. This is the way to go—here. This the place

to be.

I had

many ties to the region. And yes, life has a way of sidling on in rain-slick afternoons

like this as though nothing were amiss, as though we had just

seen each other five minutes ago and that tantrum was all for naught. As for the rusted

tackle on the rickety wooden dock, that’s hardly our affair, is it? Is it

even worth the bother of trying to locate the owner? Think about the mountains,

their motto, “We grow the best for all the rest,” and then ask yourself why it is you fall

out with those you love most, saving the look on your face for casual acquaintances, or,

better yet, complete strangers who are still pure and unrewarded: such society

as the place afforded, and as I took my seat among them, knew it wasn’t my lot to be privy

to barbs and conversations about tilefish such as this, but would hold on for a time,

as tomorrow beckoned, and today would soon be then. And minutes still trail

by, loitering. As my cock hardens I can make out a group of primitive wattled structures

just below the horizon, and am allowed to wonder why, in such circumstances, anybody

would want to live from one day to the next, without assurances, no sketch

or dream of the morrow, and then it’s gone. It disappears from view.

Patiently you again show me my name in the register where I wrote it.

But I’ll be off now, there’s no point in thanking me for what I haven’t done, nor in

my thanking you for all the things you did for me, the good things and the less good.