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Deer, 6:00 am The Wash Channel 2: Horowitz Playing Mozart That Woman Presbyopia Main poetry page Other poems Order the book |
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Deer, 6:00 a.m. The deer—neck not birch trunk, eyes not leaf or shadow, comes clear from nowhere at the eye's edge. The woman's legs stop. Her mind lags, then flashes, "Deer at edge of the woods." The deer's eyes, black and fragile, stare back and stop her breathing. The breeze drops. Light shines every leaf. She enters that other world, her feet stone still on the path. The deer stands pat and takes her in. Antlered, static as an animal— not a statue, photograph, any substitute—can be because it wants to, it includes her in the world it watches. She notes its coat, thick, stiff like straw, with a straw-like shine. There, where the ribs are, she sees no rise or fall of breathing. She breathes, shyly, attempting the etiquette of quiet. She goes over what she knows of antlers, those little trees of bone, grown for a season and shed like leaves. The deer's head, she thinks, is hieroglyphic, eyes of wet ink, unblinking. No golden links clasp the neck— no deer of Arthur's this, sent as a sign. The woman finds and fingers these few deer-thoughts in her mind. But she's no match for its stasis, she hasn't the tact. Tableau, entrancement— but what's the second panel of the tapestry? She moves, not back, discreetly, as one would leave a king, but forward, to have it done. To free (or, less likely, fall on one knee, petitioning). The deer moves, smooth as a fish, is gone. Green edges waver and reknit. The light shifts. The woman, two- legged still, walks on. "I saw a deer," she will say, pouring coffee. Not "I was." "I saw." The Wash A round white troll with a black, greasy heart shuddered and hummed "Diogenes, Diogenes," while it sloshed the wash. It stayed in the basement, a cave-dank place I could only like on Mondays, helping mother. My job was stirring the rinse. The troll hummed. Its wringer stuck out each piece of laundry like a tongue— socks, aprons, Daddy's shirts, my brother's funny (I see London) underpants. The whole family came past, mashed flat as Bugs Bunny pancaked by a train. They flopped into the rinse tub and learned to swim, relaxing, almost arms and legs again. I helped the transformation with a stick we picked up one summer at the lake. Wave-peeled, worn to gray, inch thick, it was a first rate stirring stick. Apprenticed on my stool, I sang a rhyme of Simple Simon gone afishing and poked the clothes around the cauldron and around. The wringer was risky. Touch it with just your fingertip, it would pull you in and spit you out flat as a dishrag. It grabbed Mother once—rolled her arm right to the elbow. But she kept her head, flipped the lever to reverse, and got her arm back, pretty and round as new. This was a story from Before. Still, I seemed to see it— my mother brave as a movie star, the flattened arm pumping up again, like Popeye's. I fished out the rinsing swimmers, one by one. Mother fed them back to the wringer and they flopped, flat, into baskets. Then the machine peed right on the floor; the foamy water curled around the drain and gurgled down. Mother, under the slanting basement doors, where it was darkest, reached up that miraculous arm and raised the lid. Sunlight fell down the stairs, shouting "This way out!" There was the day, an Easter egg cut-out of grass and trees and sky. Mother lugged the baskets up. Too short to reach the clothesline, I would slide down the bulkhead or sit and drum my heels to aggravate the troll (Who's that trit- trotting...) and watch. Thus I learned the rules of hanging clothes: Shirts went upside down, pinned at the placket and seams. Sheets hung like hammocks; socks were a toe-bitten row. Underpants, indecently mixed, flapped chainwise, cheek to cheek. Mother took hold of the clothespole like a knight couching his lance and propped the sagging line up high, to catch the wind. We all were airborne then, sleeves puffed out round as sausages, bottoms billowing, legs in arabesque. Our heaviness was scattered into air, our secrets bleached back to white. Mother stood easing her back and smiled, queen of the backyard and all that flapping crowd. For a week now, each day, we'd put on this jubilee, walk inside it, wash with it, and sleep in its sweetness. At night, best of all, I'd see with closed eyes the sheets aloft, pajamas dancing, pillow cases shaking out white signals in the sun, and my mother with the basket, bent and then rising, stretching up her arms. Channel 2: Horowitz Playing Mozart sits with a small smile, watching two speckled frogs or lizards run right and left, apart, together on long legs bendable as rubber. He doesn't bend down, looking, or sway to keep up with their scuffles, but sits immobile, his eyes icon-sized but lidded, following those mottled creatures. Bow-tied, sweater-vested, he could be a clerk at a counter, there to wrap things up for us the old-fashioned way, with brown paper and a string. He is old, no doubting it; his lean head states the skull's theme clearly. Strict time has taught him patience, practice this perfect stillness, amused, a little, like Buddha, watching two lithe, spotted beasts (allegro) in their hopscotch hurry. Now stealthy (lento), now frantic, they ramble and attack and he observes, as if to learn their motives-hunger? fear? territorial contention? They could be hoarding, like ants, against the future, or this display might be, in fact, a mating dance (as we, the viewers, are hoping in our hearts). They are not tame, exactly, or exactly trapped—that man is kindly, it strikes us, and would release them. He is admiring, it seems, the precision, worked out in all this time—the way they fit their niche. Just the parts they need they have evolved: the long and recurved reachers, the last joints padded hammer heads. He glances now and then at Previn, the beat-keeper. "They will go on forever," he might be saying, "unless your stick can make an end of it." There— the cut-off falls, the last chord lingers in the strings. The old man flings them—winged?—up into the air, a referee (that bow tie) declaring both the winner, sending them heavenward, letting go. That Woman Look! A flash of orange along the river's edge— "oriole!" comes to your lips like instinct, then it's vanished—lost in the foliage, in all your head holds, getting on with the day. But not gone for good. There is that woman walks unseen beside you with her apron pockets full. Days later, or years, when you least seem to need it—reading Frost on the subway, singing over a candled cake—she'll reach into a pocket and hand you this intact moment—the river, the orange streak parting the willow, and the "oriole!" that leapt to your lips. Unnoticed, steadfast, she gathers all this jumble, sorts it, hands it back like prizes from Crackerjack. She is your mother, who first said, "Look! a robin!" and pointed and there was a robin, because her own mother had said to her, "Look!" and pointed, and so on, back to the beginning: the mother, the child, and the world. The damp bottom on one arm and pointing with the other: the peach tree, the small rocks in the shallows, the moon and the man in the moon. So you keep on, seeing, forgetting, faithfully followed; and you yourself, unwitting, gaining weight, have thinned to invisibility, become that follower. Even now, your daughter doesn't see you at her elbow as she walks the beach. There! a gull dips to the Pacific, and she points and says to the baby, "Look!" Presbyopia Old eyes, but wiser, says the Greek. You lose sight of guide- lines: I before E, Every Good Boy Does Fine, Insert Tab A in Slot B. Things arrive, at this late date, unlabelled. All that book- learning a waste now-even your mate, at close range, blurs, becomes a surface with a taste. Unlettered, you take up jungle tactics, sniff and grope. You might regress to tom-toms, but who would answer? Puzzles crowd your path like carnivorous plants; your hand goes crazy, writing checks to New England Telepath and Faust National Bunk. Your grocery list asks for the "apple of life," then "ravishes, letups, grace." A meaning leans in with a wink-a wing-beat and it's off into the mist. Is a message mixed with all this mystery—advice from the next life for folks who are losing their focus on this one? Is your own hand the medium, patched in to paradise, scribe for Something Higher? If so, is it advisable to heed it— "fix radiances, take out paupers"? Not likely, after the time spent getting sensible. Even uncoded, the Word will turn out some old saw, no doubt: "Love thy neighbor," or "Buy low, sell high." You'll try to apply it, but it won't win any prize. Suppose, though, there's a clue in the works, something useful. Like, "You there, heads up! Nothing on paper can save you! Watch that horizon, out where the sea might be." A tip to heed, if that's the reading. Indeed, you've had suspicions—glimpses of something gallumphing there, whiffs of the foul or fishy, creeping up the beach. You can almost see it now, like a squid, but bigger. Keep an eye out, while there's time to imagine alternatives. Keep reading the signs: "Deaf End," "Private Poverty," "Wet Pain..." |