That Said (7 page)

 

Save yourself

from drowning.

The day a leaf

 

falls in the water

may not be

the day it sinks.

 

 

5. North: The Fish

 

The blind and depigmented fish
Amblyopsis spelaea
inhabits streams in the dark zones of caves in southern Indiana.

 

In the laboratory, the scientist

explains what I am about to see.

How, in Huddelson's cornfield,

the farmer discovered the cave

when his pig fell in the hole.

Lowered by rope into a twilit chamber,

the scientist landed on a dirt mound

studded with lost things: a hoe, twisted

vertebrae, keys, shreds of tinfoil—

whatever shiny caught the pack rats' eyes.

 

The scientist shuts off the lights

and guides me one step up, unbolting

a room of cold and dark so dense

its clarity shocks instantly—

as in the nightmare dive, the dreamer

wakes midair over water.

In the frozen halo of my iris,

the dark target widens.

 

Total darkness isn't black,

but is a deep and pit-like gray

that draws the eye into its depths.

 

The scientist passes me the flashlight

like a cigarette. Each fish

looks like a finger's length of quartz.

The colorless scales have the sheen

of silk, silver mesh around the gills.

The fins, thin undulant fans, quiver.

Cut one open, its blood runs clear as water.

Light shines straight through its head.

I focus on where the eyes should be.

Skin stretches unbroken over the skull,

flat and smooth as a thumbnail.

Eye sockets, shadows trapped in ice.

 

I dip my hand into the water

to touch the glacial head.

The fish darts away!

It stuns like current as I jerk back,

my hand rigid at my side.

My eye burns beyond its chemicals.

 

6.

 

Across the garden

two birds call

into my sleep.

 

What was it

I was dreaming?

—a mermaid turning

 

in your net

you wished to make

human by an act

 

of love? Landlocked,

I was only

divided by desire.

 

In sleep,

when each has lost

the enterprise of

 

self, and the heart

no longer steers

within the body's

 

limits, then

sun, moon, and skull

are equal in the mind.

 

On a seabed, or bed

of linen, the same

skeletal thrash

 

in darkness,

choking on water

as on air.

 

Desire's

just the interval

in birdsong.

 

The two call

across the distance

of the bed.

 

The voices call

despite weather

or temperament.

 

I let you go.

But see how my desire

drew you in.

 

7. Trompe l'oeil

 

Tonight, the grid

of trolley wires

that canopies the street

 

sags under

the sky's dark weight.

I glanced out

 

the window the moment

the trolley passed—

spattering an enormous

 

blue-white spark

that filled my bedroom

like pistol shot—

 

branding trees,

the house opposite,

where still cars

 

bloomed in points

of light. Surveying

the injury, I focused

 

on the dark.

Trees uprooted, cars

parked in air.

 

Everywhere I looked

their outlines

shocked the dark

 

and floated exactly

as they were:

double-exposed on

 

the ceiling, the wall,

burning the back

of my hand.

 

Was I looking

at tomorrow, daylight

out of any time,

 

or history

repeating itself

in waves?

 

In seconds,

the image began

to fade.

 

What the eye cannot

hold, it holds

and sharpens

 

in memory, when

a detail overlooked

ignites

 

on the white periphery.

The glitter of

things outside

 

short-circuit

beyond sight.

The spark deepens

 

in the brain

as the dark grows

more intense,

 

when, for an instant,

light is all

that's permanent.

Even while we speak, the hour passes.

—Ovid

 

For Howard

Summer twilight tamps down the farmhouse roof.

Kneeling in his lettuce patch, the farmer

stares through the wrought-iron bars of the III,

a rusting harp that heaven plunked down

beside him, junk too heavy to haul away.

He squints at his wife beyond the IX,

tending even rows of greens.

Rising and falling between them,

the steady hands of the Planter's Clock

skim the white enamel dial

that time has turned to cream.

 

The sun dips and disappears

as the moon rises over the minute hand.

The pageant glides by, on gears.

Up in thinner air where the moon aspires,

a cornucopia spills stars and ripening planets—

a tomato Mars, a turnip Saturn, and four

greenbean comets whipping their tails.

A gigantic ear of corn

floats like a spaceship over the barn.

 

Rooted in the ticking rim of earth,

the farmer and his wife can never touch.

Bright as the moon, an onion sheds its light

on their awestruck faces morning, noon, and night.

If only she could slip inside

her pretty trapezoid of home

and cook her husband a good square meal,

but the farmhouse door is painted shut,

the curtains drawn—

hiding the feather bed, the empty crib,

the cupboard filled with loaves of bread.

 

High in that harvested astronomy,

the onion is incapable of tears.

Whatever Intelligence placed it

like a highlight shining in the farm wife's eye

also chiseled the lists into the bedrock

of planting charts on which she stands—

tables of days and months and seasons,

killing frosts, auspicious times to sow—

indelible as the stone tablets of the Law.

 

The farm wife casts her vision higher even

than the moving parts of heaven.

Do other worlds like hers exist

in rooms in distant galaxies—

exact copies of her farm with weathervane,

weathered barn, and a husband

on his knees, weeding or praying,

his face a wrinkled thumbprint?

 

It's like opening a familiar book:

the illustration always stays the same

no matter what time of day she looks.

The same furrows stitch the fields;

and haystacks, heaps of golden needles,

dot the farthest pastures, the last of which

drops neatly into the horizon's ditch.

Dig potatoes now. Thin the beets.

It's five to nine. Years later than she thinks.

She feels the earthquake each minute makes

behind that shaking scenery,

heartbeats coming from so far away

she has to cup her ears to hear them.

So as not to be lonely

in the afterlife

the boy-king was buried

with his most cherished things

 

items he would need

on his journey­—

toys, enough food

for a lifetime, maybe more

 

a golden cage

on whose perch

his canary

still sings like a rusty hinge

 

his throne

his cup

a spoon or two

made of solid gold

 

urns filled with oil

urns filled with honey

some broken dishes