That she would consider it
“the amazing city”
is about as ironic
as the wry half smile
on her 5-year-old face.
She didn’t see the
protests, trials, riots.
(She never does.)
Only the possibilities.
The lofty towers
and filigreed intentions
of a something that
seemed larger than life.
Of a something that indeed
seemed “amazing.”
But what’s in a word?
the poet asks
with a similar smile:
amazing…..astonishing
half…..not wholly true
wry…..sardonic
ironic…..absurd
My duck lived
under the back porch
of my grandparents’ house
at the top of the hill
on Arch Street,
surrounded by privet
and a bowered
maze of azaleas.
The screen door creaked
and slammed into
the kitchen where
the middle drawer
had a secret panel
your finger could
push-pull for Wonder.
The rooms smelled of
eucalyptus and river
and whiskey.
In the living room,
too thin for a couch,
three chairs angled
to face the television
and the gun cabinet,
dusted and polished daily.
The deer head
didn’t have a name,
the duck did—
perhaps that’s why
we let him go.
Set loose by a bridge,
spared or sacrificed,
no one knows.
At autopsy,
they will not debate the
boring faded scar on my forehead
(sled hit tree, 1970)
or the slight divot on my chin
(golf club, 1974).
The discussion will be about
the hard marks of betrayal:
the stab in the back,
the heart cracked open,
the lungs held breathless,
the chafe on the thighs
from the necessary action
of getting back on the horse……again.
Damn analogy.
Stuck with me since dad
pulled a bloody rag from the
glove compartment,
pointed to the tree
and said neither of us
was worse for the wear,
then made me get on that sled,
pass that tree,
and move forward.
Do you think Cinderella looked up from her ironing and thought “this is going to be a great story someday”? Do you think she could identify the elements of her narrative arc, living in the moment? No doubt the beginning was very clear, it usually is. But what was the inciting incident – was it the first kiss or the first argument? the first time she stopped pretending or the first time he made her cry? If the tensions rose and fell like the tides, how could she ever recognize the climax? And had the ending been foretold—Chekov’s gun-on-the-wall theory come to pass? Had she missed it in the exposition? Or did she choose to ignore it? It would all be explained, of course, in the dénouement, when the fibers of the story are finally woven together. Or untied, as the French word suggests? Untethered?
In the pieces of memory
and scraps of conversations
transcribed in situ
I will tell you about
the headless groom
and the dead dog,
about the failure of Saint Raphael
and the irony of the phrase
“you could get hit by a bus.”
I’ll tell you the 15,000 words that broke me
and the ones that almost put me back together
until I realized my heart was better
cracked wide-open like that anyhow.
Now all I need to do is type
Happy Ending.
on the last page
and hope it will suffice.
come, look closely
I am gold here
in between the pieces
broken
no longer broken
repaired
each crack
part of my history
this shimmering self
now
here
this is no disguise
no pretending
you don’t see the scar
it is the thick hot line
that shows you
how I traveled here
come, touch it
trace your finger
along its golden trail
there is poetry there,
can you feel it?
And now you are gone again,
this moment on this day……gone
for almost as long as I knew you.
Imagine!
every formative year countered
in near equal measure for each one apart,
every lockstep moment faded
by the passing of tides and time,
until I become you.
Until I become you
in that standstill moment—
this age, this midway —
your celebration then
as familiar as my yesterday
now a present, now mine
to walk without impression.
