(no subject)
Everyday has its worries
It stormed and stormed until three car-alarms from barely new Hondas
went off under street lamps more electrical wire.
But I don’t like to think of rain that way.
Not the way I remember it from old movies I’ve seen
where shadows of men in trenches moved quietly along the walls
of a shopping mall. And behind a dumpster someone gasped
and three birds relentlessly nodded over the trash taken out from the food court.
Did you know that deep in the ocean whole countries collapse into themselves?-
that formal and absolutely present abyss. I have heard (and I believe it)
that all things: air, dogs, plastic rulers, can go up
in smoke someday. And I also know that on that day
I will go back into the earth the way ants seemed to do
when I was child, kicking over their incredible houses.
If there had been a way, five years ago, to step right into
Baum’s first illustrations of the Wizard of OZ,
I think I would have done it then.
I would have remembered the names and the addresses
so as to keep in them in an address book in a world, which,
after all, had never even claimed to be still.
I remember the way it felt to leave a Ferris wheel at thirteen:
my feet on the metal bars, toes fat under such
ridiculous sandals. There should have been a law against it-
cigarettes and cheap liquor stolen from your older brother.
When I left the house at eighteen, I left a bottle of shampoo in the gutter.
And sometimes, if I am not trying hard enough not to,
I see that whole house boiling over into sud and bubbles
-that kind of mist, like the color purple takes on air and water.
Remember Glinda (the good witch)
the way she seemed to move at the top of the screen like a moth with a wand for a star.
And the thing is I never cared much for the way two handfuls of dry sand
on the beach at night could slip right between my fingers
so lightly that I never even noticed until there wasn’t anything left.
I never cared for that kind of-oh, what is it? - accumulation.
Like snow on top of more snow until the car is stuck
and you can’t find the shovel so you sit inside all day and wonder if
the hot chocolate had always been warmer when you put the cream in it.
It stormed and stormed until three car-alarms from barely new Hondas
went off under street lamps more electrical wire.
But I don’t like to think of rain that way.
Not the way I remember it from old movies I’ve seen
where shadows of men in trenches moved quietly along the walls
of a shopping mall. And behind a dumpster someone gasped
and three birds relentlessly nodded over the trash taken out from the food court.
Did you know that deep in the ocean whole countries collapse into themselves?-
that formal and absolutely present abyss. I have heard (and I believe it)
that all things: air, dogs, plastic rulers, can go up
in smoke someday. And I also know that on that day
I will go back into the earth the way ants seemed to do
when I was child, kicking over their incredible houses.
If there had been a way, five years ago, to step right into
Baum’s first illustrations of the Wizard of OZ,
I think I would have done it then.
I would have remembered the names and the addresses
so as to keep in them in an address book in a world, which,
after all, had never even claimed to be still.
I remember the way it felt to leave a Ferris wheel at thirteen:
my feet on the metal bars, toes fat under such
ridiculous sandals. There should have been a law against it-
cigarettes and cheap liquor stolen from your older brother.
When I left the house at eighteen, I left a bottle of shampoo in the gutter.
And sometimes, if I am not trying hard enough not to,
I see that whole house boiling over into sud and bubbles
-that kind of mist, like the color purple takes on air and water.
Remember Glinda (the good witch)
the way she seemed to move at the top of the screen like a moth with a wand for a star.
And the thing is I never cared much for the way two handfuls of dry sand
on the beach at night could slip right between my fingers
so lightly that I never even noticed until there wasn’t anything left.
I never cared for that kind of-oh, what is it? - accumulation.
Like snow on top of more snow until the car is stuck
and you can’t find the shovel so you sit inside all day and wonder if
the hot chocolate had always been warmer when you put the cream in it.