THE SHIP She was beautiful a real dresser with more drawers than a Chinese puzzle box but none could capture in line on paper the grace of movement I was the only fool on board there was plenty of room for the knowing sailors nowhere for my ignorance every passage way blocked by my lack of an operating manual until some patient salt threw time my way confusion blinded me in the crow's nest I saw only the teeming decks in the forecastle only the patch of blue at the porthole the knotted ropes were my clenched muscles useless except to ache waiting for some liberating Occam's blade instead the fid of endless sailing there was no relief in sleep or rum from the incessant journey and I was mute to ask
the van with the retirees from Indiana on the way to Walmart for shampoo and gossip the muscle car with the 19 year old child looking for other 19 year old children to impress the SUV that has never been off the road on the way to a heated garage the bus full of kids all sitting facing forward on their way to a school where they'll sit facing forward the semi full of hamburgers for a fast food joint full of customers I'm standing on the corner when Jamal comes by and says: "Hey man I'm gettin a dime. You in?" I say "Yeah" and give him cash Jamal says "I gnna be back in five. You gonna be here?" and I say "Yeah. I'm not goin nowhere." Fourty years of ceaseless travel from Hartford, up the Conneticut Valley, then west on the Mohawk trail to Rome and back he fixed pots and pans in every town, slept in caves and windbreaks, slowly accruing leather patches til he was a small mountain of crazy stitches and multihued skin. The children sometimes threw stones and the mothers warned of his wrath if their admonitions were not heeded. Fourty years in the wilderness of New England farms and villages, scorned, feared but useful the butt of jokes and small town news he followed his circut like a shuffling leather mammoth the first year he failed to make his rounds, dead in some lost cave, did the children miss their target? stars strewn on a velvet blanket of steep, sparse bible black hills and when the new day arrives the stars are frosted trailer windows and the first shift is on its way to the mine can this be home? could I belong here? my back and legs ache but I'm not sure how to lay down this burden or if I can maybe long blue miles must be run before I can sleep the sleep of the righteous in the lambent village COYOTE WAITS A tyrant, a rant, arrest and i want to shout redemption with the people at the barricudas but the lawyers are circling - smell blood in the murky fiscal waters the masters laugh and 180 million Brazilians must cry the masters sneer and family farms (generations of sweat and blood and tears and semen) disappear liberty! laudenum! Reruns of Lucy! Anything but to watch this particular farce again and again and again
Rita's rubric is friendship and relativity No theory when facts are needed Knowledge trumping mystery In each hand she holds the world Laying her cards on the unified field Laughing geometry and light years Metaphors spawned, images sprawled Approximation spurned when no longer useful She unfolds tetrahedrons Under the trees at the edge of perception Shaking stardust from her blanket For an afternoon, an infinity, a picnic I'm subsumed and blessed Languid hills and time enfold me While she spins a dervish equation Of sky and smiles |
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