Aimless Love (3 page)

And sometimes a most peculiar pair turns up,

strange roommates lying there

side by side upon the page—

Arthur Godfrey next to Man Ray,

Ken Kesey by the side of Dale Evans.

It is enough to bring to mind an ark of death,

not the couples of the animal kingdom,

but rather pairs of men and women

ascending the gangplank two by two,

a surgeon and a model,

a balloonist and a metal worker,

an archeologist and an authority on pain.

Arm-in-arm, they get on board

then join the others leaning on the rails,

all saved at last from the awful flood of life—

so many of them every day

there would have to be many arks,

an armada to ferry the dead

over the heavy waters that roll beyond the world,

and many Noahs too,

bearded and fiercely browed, vigilant up there at every prow.

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden sprouting tulips

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

Hamlet noticed them in the shapes of clouds,

but I saw them in the furniture of childhood,

creatures trapped under surfaces of wood,

one submerged in a polished sideboard,

one frowning from a chair-back,

another howling from my mother’s silent bureau,

locked in the grain of maple, frozen in oak.

I would see these presences, too,

in a swirling pattern of wallpaper

or in the various greens of a porcelain lamp,

each looking so melancholy, so damned,

some peering out at me as if they knew

all the secrets of a secretive boy.

Many times I would be daydreaming

on the carpet and one would appear next to me,

the oversize nose, the hollow look.

So you will understand my reaction

this morning at the beach

when you opened your hand to show me

a stone you had picked up from the shoreline.

“Do you see the face?” you asked

as the cold surf circled our bare ankles.

“There’s the eye and the line of the mouth,

like it’s grimacing, like it’s in pain.”

“Well, maybe that’s because it has a fissure

running down the length of its forehead

not to mention a kind of twisted beak,” I said,

taking the thing from you and flinging it out

over the sparkle of blue waves

so it could live out its freakish existence

on the dark bottom of the sea

and stop bothering innocent beach-goers like us,

stop ruining everyone’s summer.

At home, the jazz station plays all day,

so sometimes it becomes indistinct,

like the sound of rain,

birds in the background, the surf of traffic.

But today I heard a voice announce

that Eric Dolphy, 36 when he died,

has now been dead for 36 years.

I wonder—

did anyone sense something

when another Eric Dolphy lifetime

was added to the span of his life,

when we all took another

full Dolphy step forward in time,

flipped over the Eric Dolphy yardstick once again?

It would have been so subtle—

like the sensation you might feel

as you passed through the moment

at the exact center of your life

or as you crossed the equator at night in a boat.

I never gave it another thought,

but could that have been the little shift

I sensed a while ago

as I walked down in the rain to get the mail?

For my birthday,

my wife gave me nine horse heads,

ghostly photographs on squares of black marble,

nine squares set in one large square,

a thing so heavy that the artist himself

volunteered to hang it

from a wood beam against a white stone wall.

Pale heads of horses in profile

as if a flashcube had caught them walking in the night.

Pale horse heads

that overlook my reading chair,

the eyes so hollow they must be weeping,

the mouths so agape they could be dead—

the photographer standing over them

on a floor of straw, his black car parked by the stable door.

Nine white horses,

or one horse the camera has multiplied by nine.

It hardly matters, such sadness is gathered here

in their long white faces

so far from the pasture and the cube of sugar—

the face of St. Bartholomew, the face of St. Agnes.

Odd team of horses,

pulling nothing,

look down on these daily proceedings.

Look down upon this table and these glasses,

the furled napkins,

the evening wedding of the knife and fork.

Look down like a nine-headed god

and give us a sign of your displeasure

or your gentle forbearance

so that we may rejoice in the error of our ways.

Look down on this ring

of candles flickering under your pale heads.

Let your suffering eyes

and your anonymous deaths

be the bridle that keeps us from straying from each other

be the cinch that fastens us to the belly of each day

as it gallops away, hooves sparking into the night.

You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine…

—Jacques Crickillon

You are the bread and the knife,

the crystal goblet and the wine.

You are the dew on the morning grass

and the burning wheel of the sun.

You are the white apron of the baker

and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,

the plums on the counter,

or the house of cards.

And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.

There is no way you are the pine-scented air.

It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,

maybe even the pigeon on the general’s head,

but you are not even close

to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.

And a quick look in the mirror will show

that you are neither the boots in the corner

nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.

It might interest you to know,

speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,

that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,

the evening paper blowing down an alley,

and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.

I am also the moon in the trees

and the blind woman’s tea cup.

But don’t worry, I am not the bread and the knife.

You are still the bread and the knife.

You will always be the bread and the knife,

not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.

I woke up this morning,

as the blues singers like to boast,

and the first thing to enter my mind,

as the dog was licking my face, was Coventry Patmore.

Who
was
Coventry Patmore?

I wondered, as I rose

and set out on my journey to the encyclopedia

passing some children and a bottle cap on the way.

Everything seemed more life-size than usual.

Light in the shape of windows

hung on the walls next to the paintings

of birds and horses, flowers and fish.

Coventry Patmore,

I’m coming to get you, I hissed,

as I entered the library like a man stepping

into a freight elevator of science and wisdom.

How many things have I looked up

in a lifetime of looking things up?

I wondered, as I set the book on the piano

and began turning its large, weightless pages.

How would the world look

if all of its things were neatly arranged

in alphabetical order? I wondered,

as I found the
P
section and began zeroing in.

How long before I would forget Coventry Patmore’s

dates and the title of his long poem

on the sanctity of married love?

I asked myself as I closed the door to that room

and stood for a moment in the kitchen,

taking in the silvery toaster, the bowl of lemons,

and the white cat, looking as if

he had just finished his autobiography.

I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,

shot with pristine light,

not this sulfurous haze,

the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.

Many have pictured a river here,

but no one mentioned all the boats,

their benches crowded with naked passengers,

each bent over a writing tablet.

I knew I would not always be a child

with a model train and a model tunnel,

and I knew I would not live forever,

jumping all day through the hoop of myself.

I had heard about the journey to the other side

and the clink of the final coin

in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,

but how could anyone have guessed

that as soon as we arrived

we would be asked to describe this place

and to include as much detail as possible—

not just the water, he insists,

rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,

not simply the shackles, but the rusty,

iron, ankle-shredding shackles—

and that our next assignment would be

to jot down, off the tops of our heads,

our thoughts and feelings about being dead,

not really an assignment,

the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—

think of it more as an exercise, he groans,

think of writing as a process,

a never-ending, infernal process,

and now the boats have become jammed together,

bow against stern, stern locked to bow,

and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.

In a rush this weekday morning,

I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery

where my parents lie buried

side by side under a smooth slab of granite.

Then, all day long, I think of him rising up

to give me that look

of knowing disapproval

while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.

is where the Elk River falls

from a rocky and considerable height,

turning pale with trepidation at the lip

(it seemed from where I stood below)

before it unbuckles from itself

and plummets, shredded, through the air

into the shadows of a frigid pool,

so calm around the edges, a place

for water to recover from the shock

of falling apart and coming back together

before it picks up its song again,

goes sliding around some massive rocks

and past some islands overgrown with weeds

then flattens out, slips around a bend,

and continues on its winding course,

according to this camper’s guide,

then joins the Clearwater at its northern fork

which leads it all to the distant sea

where this and every other stream

mistakes the monster for itself,

sings its name one final time

then feels the sudden sting of salt.

The first thing I heard this morning

was a rapid flapping sound, soft, insistent—

wings against glass as it turned out

downstairs when I saw the small bird

rioting in the frame of a high window,

trying to hurl itself through

the enigma of glass into the spacious light.

Then a noise in the throat of the cat

who was hunkered on the rug

told me how the bird had gotten inside,

carried in the cold night

through the flap of a basement door,

and later released from the soft grip of teeth.

On a chair, I trapped its pulsations

in a shirt and got it to the door,

so weightless it seemed

to have vanished into the nest of cloth.

But outside, when I uncupped my hands,

it burst into its element,

dipping over the dormant garden

in a spasm of wingbeats

then disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks.

For the rest of the day,

I could feel its wild thrumming

against my palms as I wondered about

the hours it must have spent

pent in the shadows of that room,

hidden in the spiky branches

of our decorated tree, breathing there

among the metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,

its eyes open, like mine as I lie in bed tonight

picturing this rare, lucky sparrow

tucked into a holly bush now,

a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.