METRO LACE

IV (continued)

May 13

1.

Let's back up to where we left it

like a collection of summers, each

a crown, but some misbegotten.

And share liberally the leftovers

but don't sulk like a slug in a ditch.

We have to accept those sodden

remnants of his suit draped

like rags over that gleaming shield.

I'm taking tango lessons come fall

but for now I've escaped

the breathless rites of passion,

like opening records with a knife

or selling lemonade door to door.

Green leaves are all the yield,

oh, and cicadas, if that's reason

enough to close the windows.  I'll

come in again.  I was just saying

we kept the lights dim, took

always the top or bottom floor,

dressed as little as possible

and never felt that real life

was happening elsewhere, or rarely.

Someone sprinkled water on it

and yet it still works, barely,

or at least that's how it looks,

sometimes appearances are all

we have, the haircuts, fraying

shirts, jeans, ties, aged jackets

we'd rather discard, writing idle

notices as we go, improbable

as that may be.  We're under covers

for the moment—bring matches.

2.

I hope they're coming tomorrow

those aunts you mentioned,

the ones with the recipe

for gravy.

For now we will all make do

with the last faint glimmers

of this late day, poised

to accept

the lessons we tried to mind,

didn't want to acknowledge

but are we fear forced

to concede.

At a table in the shade, breezy,

we spoke of how our brains

were stretched by all those

words we'd read.

And it was as if Imogen herself

sounded the alarm, but alas,

not soon enough to save

us poor fools.

I'm leaving a book out in the rain

for you: turn to any page, read

the sodden lines in their wet

honesty.

3.

Find her keepers.  Lose her.

Weepers.  Choose a side, say

you came from such-and-such a place

to be here, now.  But you aren't

and I'm not either.  The train

just left and we're relegated

to such ordinances as apply,

mostly having to do with what

we may buy, what eat, wear,

who see, where go.  A landfill

is the best we can hope for

in this climate, joyous just now,

if you haven't been keeping up.

I'm encouraged by the glimpse of her

in my mind right now, stepping up to me,

magenta lips and a pony tail, or maybe

riding past on a bike, or across from me

at the table, a jukebox behind her,

at the bar with a tall glass of white,

with her man at an exhibit where folks

come to see foodstuffs as sculpture.

She might be rounding a corner

in boots and tights, or favoring skirts

long and peasantlike, or in black

against the kitchen counter, maybe

wearing a leather jacket, shoulders

in spaghetti straps, or bare above

her cello, wearing those shoes

so impossibly pointed on the elevator,

sporting a wide-brimmed hat, or toque,

or in the library, the coffeeshop,

stepping outside for a smoke,

in engaging profile, or musing

at the desk, on the misty beach

so near the tide and me, lingering

in pleated pants and vest in the hall

outside the studio, in her short

salmon robe at the breakfast table,

in cut-offs for yardwork, walking with me

to get somewhere, jogging downhill,

pausing on the step above, standing in line

when her face becomes its features,

a benefice, swallowing her words

for the sake of being seen, selfless

as a photo would look if it could,

waiting for the train or on the bus,

passing through doors or turnstiles,

emptying a space or coming to fill it,

legs and feet bare, or kneeling nearby,

pursing her lips as she hears me speak,

stretching, reaching. laughing, eating,

serving, driving the car, looking back,

bending for a moment wherever she goes.

We’re not embarrassed by epic recall,

but are glad we're all the same in the end,

each freely distributing some essence

for the sake of his memory, surrendered

to dust or what can never be stated

well enough to matter.  “He gave us,”

we'd like to say, “reasons for trying,

an occasion or two that might shatter

if not for that patient unfolding,

might shiver to pieces like aged wood,

a usefully familiar implement

in the bright catalogue of days.”  If we make

his delusion our delusion, we might find

some respite from kitchens, parks, books,

beds and shops, streets and corridors,

all those tangible spaces he found us in,

might allow that a ray of light rounding our curves

matters more than anything he could say,

might grasp the abundance of objects, even

sun on bright water, the bliss of apples,

consistency a tune like fluted columns,

mica, hand-pressed cider, tended grounds,

“penguins and dolphins and seals, oh my,”

all our craning adoration for the majestic

like a motorcade of stretch limos lining

the boulevard, instead of finding, tired

of it all, our position annulled, our sorrows

multiplying and enumerated, our

making-of videos never aired.  Asked,

we always say we hadn't noticed,

fatalistic, ready to be regarded like ships

diminishing on the horizon, or a bee

but lately clasped upon a petal, a chair

where once a speaking eye sat, a smile.

She never told me what welcome she found

for her photos, nor how she got so many

things ready at once.  Accepting a hand’s

pressure is saying a lot, it seems, or

maybe it’s only a presentiment of more

shallow networks.  There’s always a street

with you on it, dividing before and behind.

***

It's not like there's room for us

in the lacrimonious bed, Maggie dear.

When you sort your orts,

leave some at the desk for me, you hear?

I've never plotted a roadtrip,

just knew when the Great Lakes would appear.

In the time it takes to sign,

it's easy enough to look in the glass and sneer.

We're good people.  Honest.

When you see us salute en masse, you’ve nothing to fear.

And I'm able at last to tell you,

unequivocally, that some of us are queer.

Wouldn't you know the sale was over

long before I got there?  In any case, it’s another year

and I’m no nearer that expansive tent,

so I’ll have to find some other way to interfere

with the consensus, consensual

as it may seem.  Let me buy you another beer

and introduce the next song.

Don't wince.  I know it's getting hot in here

and you're hoping the limo driver

will be someone who knows how to steer

and who can keep his eyes peeled,

not spend half the night trying to find first gear.

The fen's so spooky around the edges

like, I should say, the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir,

or maybe it's just so unaccommodating

like, for instance, the blasted heath in King Lear.

Don't tell me how it all turns out.

I don't want to be the last man standing, a seer

who finds himself talking to himself

as one by one the last listeners disappear.

***

Crisscross the pediment.  Don't

keep talking, or not like that.

Everyone memorizes the blazon

then forgets it, piecemeal.  Like toast

I find myself face up on a plate,

ready for butter.  Annie’s got her

stockings on, God bless her.  Dark night

lurks beyond the window, blue-black.

And what can be the harm in that?

A tangle of hair, a haunting face

and all the gift-wrapped surprises

drop into place.  “Aardvarks amble,”

Seth said with a grin, as if winking

to the wings where only the stage manager

waited, keeping his mop slightly moist,

a long, tall drink up his sleeve.

There’s more salt on this side, keep it

upright and don't request more troops

unless you can supply them or at least

give them interesting work to do, like

his son told him about, navigating

remote control air missions with bombers

signaling their positions over cities

ripe for destruction.  It could be you

in this picture, could be your task

to close in on your mirrored image

just to make it squawk.  I hear

the barmaid lived in Romania once

“long ago,” after the fall, with

human trafficking on the upswing.

Everything children remember

is more recent than they think.  And

all their yesterdays, you know, can't

hold a candle to a cocked hat

but not for lack of training.

I still see me crossing the bridge,

finding over there in Greektown

a delight in my need for roots,

the ethnic kind that always elude me,

unless we count skinny-dipping in the pool

or climbing trees all sticky with sap.

Beyond the screen door the dark is alive

with mosquitoes and crickets

and the murmur of water through a hose.

Is that it, acushla, the Delaware

and the people living near it?

Come take me to that place ahead

where you found the others

because there's no escaping the fact

they were here first, no matter what

the caption says or how creased your hands

with all the toil you've wasted

rebuilding what no man put asunder,

no, nor woman neither, and the kids,

guiltless in their lonely self-absorption,

are happy to laugh at any silliness

that smacks of death at its most absurd.

Canaries dart through gelatin, beetles affix

to your socks, and the shed we hid inside

smelled of oil and gasoline.  Wells

once held buckets in the dank evening

and the peal of bells patterned the air.

Under a stone we hid photos of nudists,

soggy, tattered, stained with leaf mold,

as if concealment promoted romance,

or remedies like lemon balm and rue.

Clucks of delight signal a vibrant revival,

our eyes dazed by the clerestory

where lapis glowed in daylight

as we returned the tables to airy storage.

We were taught by elders

to consecrate our time with hymns,

then stood in a field of dandelions

with our shoes off, our knees grass-stained,

peeling bark off trees used as bases.

I know every one of you had a father once

and in his image you fought some great lie

if only to make possible and fruitful

your own life.  I'm leaving now,

but I'm taking a thimble to sip.

Mind that chair, it smarts.

©Donald Brown 2010/2013