Sailing Alone Around the Room (9 page)

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,

one shovelful at a time.

We toss the light powder into the clear air.

We feel the cold mist on our faces.

And with every heave we disappear

and become lost to each other

in these sudden clouds of our own making,

these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,

I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.

This is the true religion, the religion of snow,

and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,

I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow

as if it were the purpose of existence,

as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway

you could back the car down easily

and drive off into the vanities of the world

with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,

me with my commentary

and he inside the generous pocket of his silence,

until the hour is nearly noon

and the snow is piled high all around us;

then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,

can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk

and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table

while you shuffle the deck,

and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes

and leaning for a moment on his shovel

before he drives the thin blade again

deep into the glittering white snow.

I cannot help noticing how this slow Monk solo

seems to go somehow

with the snow

that is coming down this morning,

how the notes and the spaces accompany

its easy falling

on the geometry of the ground,

on the flagstone path,

the slanted roof,

and the angles of the split-rail fence

as if he had imagined a winter scene

as he sat at the piano

late one night at the Five Spot

playing “Ruby, My Dear.”

Then again, it’s the kind of song

that would go easily with rain

or a tumult of leaves,

and for that matter it’s a snow

that could attend

an adagio for strings,

the best of the Ronettes,

or George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

It falls so indifferently

into the spacious white parlor of the world,

if I were sitting here reading

in silence,

reading the morning paper

or reading
Being and Nothingness
,

not even letting the spoon

touch the inside of the cup,

I have a feeling

the snow would even go perfectly with that.

Today I pass the time reading

a favorite haiku,

saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating

the same small, perfect grape

again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it

and leave its letters falling

through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.

I say it in front of a painting of the sea.

I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,

then I say it without listening,

then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,

I kneel down on the floor

and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It’s the one about the one-ton

temple bell

with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating

pressure of the moth

on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,

the bell is the world

and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it into the mirror,

I am the heavy bell

and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,

you are the bell,

and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown

from its line

and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

The one in the upper left-hand corner

is giving me a look

that says I know you are here

and I have nothing better to do

for the remainder of human time

than return your persistent but engaging stare.

She is wearing a deeply scalloped

flame-stitch halter top

with padded push-up styling

and easy side-zip tap pants.

The one on the facing page, however,

who looks at me over her bare shoulder,

cannot hide the shadow of annoyance in her brow.

You have interrupted me,

she seems to be saying,

with your coughing and your loud music.

Now please leave me alone;

let me finish whatever it was I was doing

in my organza-trimmed

whisperweight camisole with

keyhole closure and a point d’esprit mesh back.

I wet my thumb and flip the page.

Here, the one who happens to be reclining

in a satin and lace merry widow

with an inset lace-up front,

decorated underwire cups and bodice

with lace ruffles along the bottom

and hook-and-eye closure in the back,

is wearing a slightly contorted expression,

her head thrust back, mouth partially open,

a confusing mixture of pain and surprise

as if she had stepped on a tack

just as I was breaking down

her bedroom door with my shoulder.

Nor does the one directly beneath her

look particularly happy to see me.

She is arching one eyebrow slightly

as if to say, so what if I am wearing nothing

but this stretch panne velvet bodysuit

with a low sweetheart neckline

featuring molded cups and adjustable straps.

Do you have a problem with that?!

The one on the far right is easier to take,

her eyes half-closed

as if she were listening to a medley

of lullabies playing faintly on a music box.

Soon she will drop off to sleep,

her head nestled in the soft crook of her arm,

and later she will wake up in her

Spandex slip dress with the high side slit,

deep scoop neckline, elastic shirring,

and concealed back zip and vent.

But opposite her,

stretched out catlike on a couch

in the warm glow of a paneled library,

is one who wears a distinctly challenging expression,

her face tipped up, exposing

her long neck, her perfectly flared nostrils.

Go ahead, her expression tells me,

take off my satin charmeuse gown

with a sheer, jacquard bodice

decorated with a touch of shimmering Lurex.

Go ahead, fling it into the fireplace.

What do I care, her eyes say, we’re all going to hell anyway.

I have other mail to open,

but I cannot help noticing her neighbor

whose eyes are downcast,

her head ever so demurely bowed to the side

as if she were the model who sat for Correggio

when he painted “The Madonna of St. Jerome,”

only it became so ungodly hot in Parma

that afternoon, she had to remove

the traditional blue robe

and pose there in his studio

in a beautifully shaped satin teddy

with an embossed V-front,

princess seaming to mold the bodice,

and puckered knit detail.

And occupying the whole facing page

is one who displays that expression

we have come to associate with photographic beauty.

Yes, she is pouting about something,

all lower lip and cheekbone.

Perhaps her ice cream has tumbled

out of its cone onto the parquet floor.

Perhaps she has been waiting all day

for a new sofa to be delivered,

waiting all day in a stretch lace hipster

with lattice edging, satin frog closures,

velvet scrollwork, cuffed ankles,

flare silhouette, and knotted shoulder straps

available in black, champagne, almond,

cinnabar, plum, bronze, mocha,

peach, ivory, caramel, blush, butter, rose, and periwinkle.

It is, of course, impossible to say,

impossible to know what she is thinking,

why her mouth is the shape of petulance.

But this is already too much.

Who has the time to linger on these delicate

lures, these once unmentionable things?

Life is rushing by like a mad, swollen river.

One minute roses are opening in the garden

and the next, snow is flying past my window.

Plus the phone is ringing.

The dog is whining at the door.

Rain is beating on the roof.

And as always there is a list of things I have to do

before the night descends, black and silky,

and the dark hours begin to hurtle by,

before the little doors of the body swing shut

and I ride to sleep, my closed eyes

still burning from all the glossy lights of day.

I was here before, a long time ago,

and now I am here again

is an observation that occurs in poetry

as frequently as rain occurs in life.

The fellow may be gazing

over an English landscape,

hillsides dotted with sheep,

a row of tall trees topping the downs,

or he could be moping through the shadows

of a dark Bavarian forest,

a wedge of cheese and a volume of fairy tales

tucked into his rucksack.

But the feeling is always the same.

It was better the first time.

This time is not nearly as good.

I’m not feeling as chipper as I did back then.

Something is always missing—

swans, a glint on the surface of a lake,

some minor but essential touch.

Or the quality of things has diminished.

The sky was a deeper, more dimensional blue,

clouds were more cathedral-like,

and water rushed over rock

with greater effervescence.

From our chairs we have watched

the poor author in his waistcoat

as he recalls the dizzying icebergs of childhood

and mills around in a field of weeds.

We have heard the poets long dead

declaim their dying

from a promontory, a riverbank,

next to a haycock, within a copse.

We have listened to their dismay,

the kind that issues from poems

the way water issues forth from hoses,

the way the match always gives its little speech on fire.

And when we put down the book at last,

lean back, close our eyes,

stinging with print,

and slip in the bookmark of sleep,

we will be schooled enough to know

that when we wake up

a little before dinner

things will not be nearly as good as they once were.

Something will be missing

from this long, coffin-shaped room,

the walls and windows now

only two different shades of gray,

the glossy gardenia drooping

in its chipped terra-cotta pot.

And on the floor, shoes, socks,

the browning core of an apple.

Nothing will be as it was

a few hours ago, back in the glorious past

before our naps, back in that Golden Age

that drew to a close sometime shortly after lunch.

I remember the quick, nervous bird of your love.

I remember the quick, nervous bird of your love.

Always perched on the thinnest, highest branch.

Always perched on the thinnest, highest branch.

Thinnest love, remember the quick branch.

Always nervous, I perched on your highest bird the.

It is time for me to cross the mountain.

It is time for me to cross the mountain.

And find another shore to darken with my pain.

And find another shore to darken with my pain.

Another pain for me to darken the mountain.

And find the time, cross my shore, to with it is to.

The weather warm, the handwriting familiar.

The weather warm, the handwriting familiar.

Your letter flies from my hand into the waters below.

Your letter flies from my hand into the waters below.

The familiar waters below my warm hand.

Into handwriting your weather flies you letter the from the.

I always cross the highest letter, the thinnest bird.

Below the waters of my warm familiar pain,

Another hand to remember your handwriting.

The weather perched for me on the shore.

Quick, your nervous branch flew from love.

Darken the mountain, time and find was my into it

was with to to.