I.
You always seem to know the time and place
when I'm least inclined to listen. Your voice came sheering
with its syllabled static, and now my brain is laced
with dust again, things I'd found and set in line like dolls
for an honest accounting have fallen into a muddle.
I wanted to write of a summer, a once, with rod and reel,
the bridge over the creek, the lure that writhed
and left my fingers tacky, flung with a whizz and kerplunk
into the water. Fat fish wallowed deep, shadows
that moved with weak volition. I wanted one of those
stinkers weighing my line, a bug-eyed chump
with a chic piercing. You can't eat them, they told me.
Fish I can live without; but the bridge
with its quaint arch, its sense of somewhere else,
its buck and tremor under galoshes, remains
in high memory, not the killing, the wide-eyed
deaths drying in pails, the knife scrapes
or the funk of scales, but the scent and gossip
of the water, the queen's-hand-wave
of oak and maple leaves at the end of Augusts,
the green that meant too much to give up,
too much to let go of. I never really liked
fishing, and mostly merely tolerated those times
with friends at some dock or bridge
over water that seemed too scummy to forage in -
red and white and round, the bobbers bobbed
like miniature bell-buoys in the muck,
the silvery film where insects walked like Christs,
legs like hair on a forearm; under the water a worm,
pierced through his dark pink cumberbund,
longed in its simple way for a hole in the ground
where rain is a gift on the roof, and not the world -
but better you should think that I am
on about it sentimentally, so that
you keep your tongue plumb to your palate,
not wishing to disturb me.
II.
The little one stands at the gate and drops a car
onto my side, followed by a stuffed turtle,
so I have to get up and toss the things back over,
thereby initiating the Game. I begin to wonder
why I never wrote prolifically as a bachelor,
when the only distractions were the occasional
knuckles on the door, or the irritating whistle
of the telephone. Those things could be ignored.
One could maintain a decent train of thought.
One could even pack it in and go fishing.
a knife dissects a chunk of ham: smells and sounds
that contest the smoke of my cigarette,
the pacifying click of fingerpads
and keys. I had to trawl for a spoon among
floating soap film and bread crust: my new
pond and pined-for island, a fresh stink.
You always seem to know the time and place
when I'm least inclined to listen. Your voice came sheering
with its syllabled static, and now my brain is laced
with dust again, things I'd found and set in line like dolls
for an honest accounting have fallen into a muddle.
I wanted to write of a summer, a once, with rod and reel,
the bridge over the creek, the lure that writhed
and left my fingers tacky, flung with a whizz and kerplunk
into the water. Fat fish wallowed deep, shadows
that moved with weak volition. I wanted one of those
stinkers weighing my line, a bug-eyed chump
with a chic piercing. You can't eat them, they told me.
Fish I can live without; but the bridge
with its quaint arch, its sense of somewhere else,
its buck and tremor under galoshes, remains
in high memory, not the killing, the wide-eyed
deaths drying in pails, the knife scrapes
or the funk of scales, but the scent and gossip
of the water, the queen's-hand-wave
of oak and maple leaves at the end of Augusts,
the green that meant too much to give up,
too much to let go of. I never really liked
fishing, and mostly merely tolerated those times
with friends at some dock or bridge
over water that seemed too scummy to forage in -
red and white and round, the bobbers bobbed
like miniature bell-buoys in the muck,
the silvery film where insects walked like Christs,
legs like hair on a forearm; under the water a worm,
pierced through his dark pink cumberbund,
longed in its simple way for a hole in the ground
where rain is a gift on the roof, and not the world -
but better you should think that I am
on about it sentimentally, so that
you keep your tongue plumb to your palate,
not wishing to disturb me.
II.
The little one stands at the gate and drops a car
onto my side, followed by a stuffed turtle,
so I have to get up and toss the things back over,
thereby initiating the Game. I begin to wonder
why I never wrote prolifically as a bachelor,
when the only distractions were the occasional
knuckles on the door, or the irritating whistle
of the telephone. Those things could be ignored.
One could maintain a decent train of thought.
One could even pack it in and go fishing.
a knife dissects a chunk of ham: smells and sounds
that contest the smoke of my cigarette,
the pacifying click of fingerpads
and keys. I had to trawl for a spoon among
floating soap film and bread crust: my new
pond and pined-for island, a fresh stink.
