Unto Us a Holiday When the light would not conform to levels specified on the reflective packaging, an attorney arrived to treat us to a consolation dinner. The maître d’ cannot forget us, hard as he might roll himself into the municipal sandpit, from which come the beaches! And the population strolls in with a canoe. By now you know I love you as a mother loves her barely rescued skier: you are cold, you say little, but over your charming red jacket I embrace you fiercely as my own and can only hope this is not another tragicomic instance of misplaced recognition. Dogs are always going home with a new and potentially superior family, beginning the month as calmly as a sherpa on leave. Everyone needs a vacation. If it is not you, I apologize truly and invite you to depart with this fruit basket, a token of my strident esteem. Was there once a man who, having stepped on a train in the wrong direction, rode all the way to Mattapan, due to his impeccable sense of transportational obligation? I hope so, for if he did, then the furthering of impromptu splendor could have only increased when from behind he thought a resident of this new town resembled particularly his handsome wife. The world is fond of us, with reservation. A pair of ducks will nap on the asphalt. And if your ticket’s gone missing or you think the map has systematically disarrayed itself each time the light hit its junctions, then we will compose together a note shedding grace on your troubles and wait in old-fashioned quiet for your generous forthcoming reward. A Better Poetry Concerning My Mother It is difficult, a good poetry concerning my mother. She is generally done right to a cap. Commitment to the dead wants of the sun! Even when you shout that, it is still not easy, a good poetry concerning my mother, because underneath the straw she is almost too much or to outside my britches have escaped, stamped like in my average ear. Ow and ow. Goedendag, mummy! I become concerned penetrating shouts and the woman in Canada deeply saddens—must be, she has no regrets and she sings herself outside the shower, no regrets and she does soap her thighs. Whatever Doesn't Arrive Will Later. But perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves—let’s say our thinking is a fun car our noses are attached to. In thirty years the sun will have pulled off a lot of dirty tricks and not been punished. Other things you can’t arrest are: leaves and crazy loving. The leaves arrived all at once this year, came on like a clumsy chorus. Hi! We’re all here in our outfits! It is hard to dislike the trees, but we should probably try, as a kind of exercise or basic amusement. We could do it for hours and arrange for someone to stop by with a sandwich. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, we must eat eat eat! Which is but one of the many things that ducks say to their offspring. Learning can take place anywhere— the parking lot, Milan, the parking garage. It’s all a matter of close regard for the gasoline-lipped puddle. And then a spring into action, a sprint into plein air, where all the wives have gathered. They are of infinite variety, some lacquered, some even giving off mist, having only just left the aquarium, where they spent days with the kids touching starfish. Let’s go up and introduce ourselves—speak whatever language comes to mind—they cannot hear us, but need only a little opening through which it becomes polite to smile and offer us their hand. The Duchess of Caribou, Maine I will begin by curtsying and damning the Normans. Fie! You will get no souvenir. I am wearing this skirt. It’s blue and orange, harlequined, appalling! I dance this way: lift my right foot, stomp my partner, lift my club foot and point. I can pose like this for eighteen hours, including in the airport, which, I’ll have you know, exists mostly in my mind. I am always smashing helicopters into the duller trees. Can you believe the vastness of my white and meaty arm? Truly I am a wench on the move, climbing the cinder blocks, packing cedar trunks with abandon. I tire of this outfit, bring me another. I shall wear the bleeding sonata! I regret I must commence twirling, which, as you know, plants a school of torpedoes. I promise you this, the rations are divine. back |