Things As They Are

Coffee’s tepid. I put in too much milk.

A dead fly
on the window sill, another
on the table.

What Charles Olsen said was right.

The light advances.



*


I listen to the sound of water moving in the aquarium behind me.
You shake your spoon over your bowl like you’re holding a fish
by the tail. Dog fur clings to the sleeve of your black sweater. We
are not speaking. You clear your throat, one hand
holding open a book, the other dangling that piscine spoon.


Nothing jumps up from the bowl to claim it.



*



You say you dreamed that you were kidnapped by a mob boss.
You started to like him. The two of you tried to make love, but
something kept happening.

That’s how it is in dreams.



*

Soon our daughter goes off to boarding school.
A few weeks left of the phone ringing every five minutes,
a few weeks of exasperated disdain for our parental
excesses, a handful of mornings to catch her
asleep in the bed of her childhood, her arm cast over the belly
of a soft, white bear.

Still the light advances.



*



Yesterday my mother called, distraught. She thought her neighbor
had been killed in an accident and she asked me to find out
if it was true. I called in and confirmed it: a vehicle vs. bicyclist
fatality on Highway One, between the Castle and San Simeon,
a guy coming home from work, her neighbor.

I called Mom back and told her. She got so sad. She takes misfortune
as a personal affront. It knocks her socks off. She said “Oh,
I feel so bad.”

I agreed it’s always sad.

She said, “I don’t know how you do it, every day. Stuff like this.”

Her voice sounded so far off. I knew there was something to say,
something that would connect her pain to what makes sense.
Some way to connect her heart to mine.

I didn’t have the words. When she hung up I wanted
to reach out again, but did not.


The danger’s everywhere, is what I should have said.



*


Your blue breakfast bowl is in the sink now. I type away
and you have just closed the door behind you as you step
out into the back yard. You are going to work in the studio
with scissors and a needle. Something wants cutting,
some other thing stitches.

You’ll bite the edge of a sheet in your teeth and tear,
rending it in two for your art.








*