Leaving the gray bulk of the city, ugly crush
of abandoned strip centers, sickening graffiti, happens
so quickly—a day’s hand opens to release you.
Soon we will need to drive even farther,
to ruined towns like Langtry and Sanderson,
where the internet won’t work to report
what our country has done. Maybe there is a cave
no one lived in since the Kiowa, with no writing
on any walls, no painted pictures of animals or flames,
just an ancient heap of ashes in one corner.
There were times we thought the stone ages
behind us.
“Little Brother Shot Playing with Pistol”
His sister runs screaming from the church,
jacket slips from one shoulder to the floor.
No carpet should be red today.
No one singing, “Precious Lord.”
For the next number, “I Won’t Complain”
a crowd of wailing women rise up,
aunties and grandmas banging handbags
against the backs of pews.
“At least he’s not suffering”—
wouldn’t most dead people
rather be suffering?
Moment of Relief
News loves to be bad.
It’s a bad habit.
Think of all the good things people do—
Right now, how many people in our own town
are stirring soup to give away . . .
Bad news still gets more attention,
trash talk, insult . . .
At some point you make a decision.
Which world?
Malala, smiling warmly, speaks of dreams,
girls going to school,
mutual respect.
The newscasters stick her in
after lots of badness.
They know we can only take so much.
Unbelievable Things
1
My friend did not hear the sleek silent new electric bus coming. She had stepped off a curb—the bus threw her into the air. A woman with many children dashed to her rescue. Although my friend was shaken up and bruised, no bones were broken and she went to work the next day. Within the same week, in an entirely different part of town, my friend returned to find her parked car had been hit, the side mirror snapped off. A note of apology, with insurance information, was folded under the windshield wiper. The car had been hit by a bus.
2
I had lunch with the president of Finland while wearing a gray linen shift dress I had purchased for fifty cents in a thrift shop in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
3
Michael pushed a shopping cart filled with boring Home Depot items—wires, hoses, plumbing connectives, a can of primer—toward his car. He removed his hands from the cart for a moment to reach into his pocket for keys and a man dashed up from behind and began rolling the cart away. Hey, wait a minute! Michael called out. What are you doing?
The man said, Finders, Keepers.
4
Way up north in Aroostook County, Maine, the town library was getting rid of books—massive heaps of books lay scattered willy-nilly on long tables with a sign—TAKE ANYTHING YOU WANT—FREE. Why? I asked the librarian. What is wrong with these books? I stared at the library shelves. They weren’t stuffed. We don’t want them, the librarian said. They are of no use to us anymore. Does that mean no one checked them out for a while? She shrugged, exhibiting no remorse. But a great sadness swept over me and I began browsing. Hardbacks mostly—biographies, Adlai Stevenson and Gandhi, novels, short stories, expeditions—mostly early- and mid-twentieth century editions. Some had engraved-style covers and were even older. I thought of my brother-in-law in New Zealand who collects and sells books about adventure and I hiked straight down to the Dollar Store to buy the most heavy-duty black trash bags available. Good thing I’d been assigned to work in that town for a whole week.
Every day I visited the library and packed a bag with books, then hauled it up the hill to where I was staying. I asked my hosts if I might leave the books in the front hallway so I didn’t have to lug them all up the stairs—my room was in the attic. They stared at me dubiously. I urged them to get down to the library.
At the middle school where I was working, I pressed the writing students. Hey people, you must get over to the library. Do it today. Great books are sitting there free waiting for you to claim them. You won’t even have to return them.
They stared at me. I never saw a single student at the library.
On Friday after school, I arrived to find the long tables gone. The librarian pointed to the back door when she saw me. They’re outside now, she said.
A mountain of lovely books lay on the ground behind the library, recklessly pitched.
I felt dizzy, sick. Marched back inside.
What happens to them next?
They go to the town dump.
My brain was whirling. Was there a criminal code for this?
The next day my husband would return from his own work in Canada to collect me and drive home to Texas. He would be shocked to see how my baggage had grown.
One of the books I took home with me was about a 1920s man who walked alone across Africa, something my bookseller brother-in-law had also done. This would be a perfect present for him. Later I heard he sold that book, that slightly tattered book with the empty library card pocket still inside its cover (which they say reduces the value), for $500.
5
I mailed a letter to my friend Howard Peacock, who liked to strut by the river between our dwellings, staring into water, meditating on turtles and cranes. Howard had a long white beard and a deeply southern, elegant way of speaking. He rented a small apartment in the Granada, an old downtown building which used to be a hotel. Howard gave me his dead wife’s casserole cookbook, which I never used because it was mostly meat. But I wanted to thank him, so mailed him a letter. I could just have walked down to the river and handed it to him. I also thanked him for saving the Big Thicket in east Texas which everyone said he and his late wife had fairly singlehandedly preserved, throwing themselves down in front of bulldozers, and a good thing, because those forests are profound and precious like all great things people struggle to preserve. He never mentioned my letter till five years had passed and he called. Did you write me a letter five years ago?
Uh, I think so. Maybe. Why? I got it today. Nearly five years to the day since you wrote it. Seriously. I’m mailing the envelope back to you right now as proof. It had taken my letter five years to travel six blocks.
I carried the envelope with both our addresses on it to the post office and asked the clerk, Do you have any idea where this letter might have been for five whole years? The clerk gazed at me with his deep sad eyes and said, Nope. It could have been anywhere.
6
Your parents met each other. Anybody met anybody.
Out of all the possible people who might have been born, you were born.
Constant miracles. But who remembers them?
Before the great film critic Roger Ebert died, he said, I believe I was perfectly all right before I was born and I think I’ll be fine later too.
We walk around the block, stride up the hillside. Is it this year or last? Something strange is happening. We’re so anxious but deep down, in the heart place of time, our lives are resonant, rolling. They’re just waiting for us to remember them. They are very patient and quiet. We are here, so deeply here, and then we won’t be.
And it is the most unbelievable thing of all.
Airport Life
1
Loudspeaker announcement (San Antonio, Texas)
Attention in the terminal!
Would the passengerwho left a bucket of stones
with a candle stuck in them
please
return tothe security
checkpoint?
My shock—sitting at A3—I am the only one laughing.
; Businessmen aren’t laughing.
They didn’t even hear it.
Repeat announcement . . .
Everyone looks bored. They are checking their phones.
They are telling people where they are.
2
Man on cell phone (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia)
Good-bye! Bye-bye, my sweethearts!
Love you!
Send email! Send pictures! Don’t forget!
Pray, do everything!!!!!
And take care!
Texas, Out Driving
The Solid Rock Church of Kerrville
has moved to another location.
It says so on the sign under the name—Solid Rock.
Also the entire town of Comfort
appears to be for sale.
This does not feel comforting at all.
How many times we drove these curves,
pale fence posts, bent cedars . . .
but nothing needs us here.
Nothing we said, thought, forgot,
took root in the ditch around the bend.
I always want to stop at historic markers,
see what happened long before, but
the pull of motion keeps a car going,
passing by till next time,
which soon won’t come,
even when everything we know
says slow.
Missing the Boat, Take Two
We sat on a long wooden pier,
waiting for a boat for one full hour.
Stared at gentle wavelets,
chatted with a sailor,
read about Maine,
reminisced.
Then the boat sneaked in so quietly,
pulled up at a slant behind our backs,
loaded passengers,
we never turned our heads into the sun to see,
the boat slipped away from the dock,
we were shocked.
I hope dying could feel like this.
All We Will Not Know
For Adriana Corral
Before dawn, trembling in air down to the old river,
circulating gently as a new season
delicate yet in its softness, rustling raiment
of hopes never stitched tightly enough to any hour.
I was almost, maybe, just about, going to do that.
A girl’s thick hair, brushed over one shoulder
so often no one could imagine it not being there.
Hair as a monument. Voice as a monument.
Hovering—pitched.
Beloved sister, maker of plans, main branch,
we need you desperately, where have you gone?
Here is the sentence called No no no no no.
Come back, everything grants you your freedom,
Here in the mire of too much thinking,
we drown, we drown, split by your echo.
Loving Working
“We clean to give space for Art.”
—Micaela Miranda, Freedom Theatre, Palestine
Work was a shining refuge when wind sank its tooth
into my mind. Everything you love is going away,
drifting, but you could sweep this stretch of floor,
this patio or porch, gather white stones in a bucket,
rake the patch for future planting, mop the counter
with a rag. Lovely wet gray rag, squeeze it hard,
it does so much. Clear the yard of blowing bits of
plastic.
The glory in the doing. Breath of the doing.
Sometimes the simplest move kept fear from
fragmenting into no energy at all, or sorrow from
multiplying, or sorrow from being the only person
living in the house.
Stars Over Big Bend
Maybe we first met this arching dome
in dreams of what a life could be.
Sheer spaciousness, before hope
bent backward too many times,
breaking news breaking us.
In the vast immensity
a breath feels more at home,
released into place.
Never mind which star might be dead,
how long ago it died—
don’t want to know.
Light taking forever to get here,
more precious when it arrives.
Far-ranging, brilliance to quietude,
legacies of patience, belonging, disappearing.
And if the stars do not remember us, they act otherwise.
United
When sleepless, it’s helpful to meditate
on mottoes of the states.
South Carolina, “While I breathe I hope.”
Perhaps this could be
the new flag on the empty flagpole.
Or “I Direct” from Maine—
Why, because Maine gets the first sunrise?
How bossy, Maine!
In Arkansas, “The People Rule.” Lucky you.
Kansas, “To the Stars Through Difficulties”—
clackety wagon wheels, long land
and the droning press of heat—cool stars, relief.
Idaho, “Let it be perpetual”—now this is strange.
Idaho, what is your “it”?
Who chose these lines?
How many contenders?
What would my motto be tonight, in tangled sheets?
Texas, “Friendship”—now boasts the Open Carry
law.
Wisconsin, where my mother’s parents are buried,
chose “Forward.” Washington, wisest, “By and By.”
New Mexico, “It Grows as It Goes”—
now this is scary.
Two dangling “its.” This does not represent
that glorious place.
West Virginia, “Mountaineers are always free”—really?
Oklahoma must be tired, “Labor conquers all things.”
Oklahoma, get together with Nevada, who chose only “Industry” as motto.
I think of Nevada as a playground,
or mostly empty. How wrong we are
about one another.
For Alaska to pick “North to the Future”
seems odd. Where else are they going?
Reserved for Poets
(Signs on first rows of chairs at poetry festival, La Conner, Washington)
Sunsets.
Trouble.
Full moons.
No really—they’re everybody’s.
Nothing is reserved.
We’re all poets rippling with
layers of memories,
mostly what we might forget.
Let it belong. Every pocket,
satchel, hand.
We forgot to make a reservation.
But there’s room.
Her Father Still Watching
For Doris Duke, whose father’s last words were said to have been “Trust no one”
You can trust me, said white marble
Trust us more, said black volcanic rocks
The palm tree said, I deserve nothing but trust
And the clouds drifting swiftly
said nothing but held
their trust sacred
Small Basket of Happiness
It would never call your name.
But it would be waiting somewhere close,
perhaps under a crushed leaf
turned from pale green to gold
with no fanfare.
You hadn’t noticed
the gathered hush
of a season’s tipping.
Shadows flowing past
before any light came up,
people whom only a few
might remember,
so much accompaniment
inside a single breeze.
All whom we loved.
In the quiet air lived
the happiness they had given.
And would still give, if only.
You would slow down a minute.
> You would bend.
Biographical Notes
Here are a few biographical notes on the great voices mentioned in this book that have inspired and encouraged me and so many others over the years.
Read on, friends, read on! We have never read or listened enough.
Galway Kinnell—Lived in New York and Vermont. Kinnell used to say we need to taste poems in our mouths, roll them over and over to appreciate them. Don’t miss his When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone or A New Selected Poems, which reads like a feast. (Introduction)
Abraham Lincoln—Sixteenth American president, whom we miss very much. He didn’t write any books (although so many have been written about him), but we hear his voice in his speeches and should probably all read “The Gettysburg Address” on a regular basis. (Introduction)
William Stafford—Born in Kansas, taught in Oregon, traveled widely, conscientious objector, one of the most essential voices of the twentieth century. The Way It Is, published after his death, brings together many of his most indelible poems. His Every War Has Two Losers, edited by his son Kim after his death, should be chained to a pedestal in the Oval Office. (Introduction and “Woven by Air, Texture of Air” and “Tell Us All the Gossip You Know”)
Peter Matthiessen—Prolific American writer, environmentalist, and activist. Lived on Long Island and loved birding. So many people say their lives have been changed by The Snow Leopard. He preferred his fiction to his nonfiction, though. (Introduction and “Warbler Woods”)
Juna Hewitt—Young artist/student from Yokohama, Japan, and New York. (Introduction)
Freya Stark—British author who lived 100 years and wrote about travel (especially Middle Eastern) and culture. Her book The Journey’s Echo (first American edition in 1964), with sections written in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, is particularly haunting to read in the twenty-first century. (Introduction)
Townes Van Zandt—Great singer/songwriter from a historic Texas family, whose most well-known song was “Pancho and Lefty.” But “If I Needed You” and so many other beautiful songs he wrote will never disappear. (Introduction)
Hallie Stillwell—Rancher, historian, lived in Big Bend National Park, Texas, and wrote How Come It’s Called That? Place Names in the Big Bend Country. (“Big Bend National Park Says No to All Walls”)
Voices in the Air Page 7