The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech

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The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech Page 6

by Dobyns, Stephen;

Wasn’t it near this spot that the son of Kronos

  pursued his inamorata, holding out a handful

  of shining seeds? The ex-sailor asks, Why not?

  These are time’s entropic diminishments.

  As each person’s golden age is turned to tin,

  he sets another crimson morsel on his tongue.

  Crazy Times

  For Charles Baxter

  Twelve murderers are eating their dinners,

  veal cutlets and walnuts, pickled pigs’ feet.

  Somebody sticks his head through the door.

  The inevitable question is asked.

  Not me, says Biter; nor me, says Shooter.

  We didn’t do it, say Choker and Stabber.

  Nor me, nor me, say all the others.

  The door closes with a bang.

  The bad chaps return to their meal,

  shoveling in the food with both hands,

  slurping their jaws as they chew,

  swallowing with great gulps, then belching,

  picking their teeth with the tips of their daggers.

  Afterward they stagger to the door and lurch down

  the street. Back to work! they happily shout.

  And you, shopping or walking or simply standing still,

  you’d better pick up your feet and hightail it home,

  lock those deadbolt locks and crawl under the covers.

  Your brothers and sisters are coming to get you,

  the ones you had forgotten about,

  the ones you should have thought about earlier.

  Ring ding goes the doorbell. Welcome to crazy times.

  [revision]

  Parable: Fan/Paranoia

  He knew from the start it wasn’t a mistake,

  that he’d been the only person singled out.

  Running from the dark bar to the sunlit street,

  he asked why he hadn’t been more alert.

  The sidewalk was packed, and people darted

  from his path, their faces distorted by disgust.

  He thought fifty people had been in the bar—

  a lunchtime crowd. But forty-nine were ciphers,

  out-of-work actors hired for the job, and who

  loved their roles given their sobs and shrieks,

  the beating of fists on the floor. Yesterday

  it was a near escape from a bus; before that

  a brick was dropped from a roof. And those

  out of work actors, they showed their hatred

  by their refusal to look at him, their refusal

  to give any sign of the devastation to come.

  What had caused their loathing? Maybe he’d

  insulted someone, or hurt someone. He tried

  to recall likely enemies: ex-girlfriends, former

  employers. Stubbornly, he searched his past,

  going back to when he first learned to walk.

  The beds he had wet, the pants he had shat.

  Once begun he couldn’t stop as he recalled

  the dildo hung from a girl’s dress with a pin.

  No wonder he never got dates and lost friends,

  no wonder someone loathed him. Had he ever

  been lucky or done anything right? For years

  he had lurched from one blunder to the next.

  Was change an option? Could he help being a jerk?

  All he knew for certain was someone somewhere

  had dedicated his life to getting even, someone

  sneaking along behind him, or on the next block.

  The people hurrying toward him looked fretful,

  the ones running away looked faint. But weren’t

  there odd rewards? Didn’t his caution sharpen

  the world around him so that every blossom

  grew brighter, and even those who took flight

  at his approach displayed a clumsy splendor,

  as revulsion broke open the cage of anonymity

  and inhibition? He saw the fear in their faces

  and found it dreadful, but it also set his heart

  beating with unfamiliar pleasure. See the man

  advancing in the yellow hardhat? See the glare

  in his little pink eyes? Surely his belief that here

  was one of his enemy’s minions also gave delight.

  So it didn’t matter when the man shouted out

  in a voice rising above the street: You look like

  shit! In another life, they might have been friends.

  Winter Wind

  Whitecaps on the river—so fierce

  is the day’s wind: a crowd of people

  waving hats in the air. They must be

  waving goodbye. Not yet, he thinks,

  best not to look. Chickadees flutter

  among the branches of the juniper,

  playing it safe. Who knows where

  they might end up? Feathered confetti.

  All night he dreamt of cars in collision;

  someone’s done for, that’s for certain.

  Doors bang; clouds rush to the east.

  So much disorder and the sky seems

  bluer than ever, a page across which

  indistinct messages are scrawled in haste.

  So It Happens

  The dark reaches up through a crack

  in the horizon and drags the sun deep

  into the night. That noise, is it an owl

  perched in the bare branches of an oak?

  What is that creature back on the path,

  zigzagging forward, jittering its rags?

  The night hot and damp like the inside

  of a fist, or a tumor growing within him.

  Not a real tumor, no. He tends it as one

  might tend a garden. Grinding, grinding—

  the turning of the earth on its axis.

  This man loves the gun, that one the lily:

  so each creates his idea of the world.

  Tinsel

  There were dreams in which he fell in love. The woman was no one from the real world. At times they touched, at times the touching was a promise that lay ahead. At times there were obstacles—distances to be crossed, moments to be found. At times it was easy from the start: the ecstatic tension, the joy in beholding the face of the other. And there, in the midst of sleep, he felt he’d soon be released from futility and disconnection. Then, on waking, he was crushed by his loss. This figment adorning his dream, it was dreadful to think she didn’t exist, had never existed. For a few nights he hoped to dream of her again and instead came his usual dreams of searching for something among dark streets and cul-de-sacs. And if until then his life had seemed complete, now he felt a lack; if his life had been lacking, now it seemed empty. That’s how it can happen in dreams—the intrusion of a tinseled deceit on which to base all hopes that turns the day to shadow.

  Future

  The skeleton of a horse, still noble

  in a museum in Indiana, a century dead

  and its service for the North long over;

  or a stuffed St. Bernard in a monastery

  in the Alps, honored for the near frozen

  it saved from the snow; or something

  modest, a two-headed rabbit packed

  in a jar—so those friends he had lost or

  were dispersed, buried, given to science,

  how much better to have them stuffed,

  mounted, fixed in a museum: One reading

  a good book as he strokes his mustache;

  a girl laughing as she flips off a bottle cap.

  A favorite place to walk at the start of day,

  running his fingers over the glass cases, like

  seeing friends who can give advice almost.

  Then a chair where he’d sit in the evening,

  reading the paper by a lamp, a little music,

  no one speaking but companionable, the world’s

  ruckus shut out. Hard not to go more often,

  harder each time to leave. These i
maginings

  that grow as he gets older on how the future

  might work out: ambulance rejected, doctors

  sent packing. Only others would call it death.

  Parable: Poetry

  It was hot. At night the penguin dreamt of the Antarctic.

  That’s how it began. He bought a fan; he bought

  ice cubes. He bought an old Ford convertible and let

  the wind riffle his feathers. He rushed all over town.

  It’s my duty to be happy, he told himself. His life

  took on new meaning. He hung yellow rubber dice

  from the mirror, tied a raccoon tail to the antenna.

  He sang along to country on the radio. He waved

  at pretty girls. But soon his car began to cough,

  as when a bit of steak goes down the wrong tube.

  It shook all over like a kitten in winter. The vehicle

  prepared to die. Luckily, a garage lay straight ahead.

  The mechanic was busy, but said: Return in an hour

  and I’ll know better. So the penguin strolled to a diner

  just next door where he ordered apple pie à la mode.

  By far his favorite. Then he hurried back to the garage.

  The mechanic was stretched out beneath the hood,

  his face smeared with grease. Engine parts lay

  scattered across the floor. You got real problems,

  said the mechanic. Your fuel pump’s busted,

  your generator’s shot, your carburetor’s rusted

  and it looks like you’ve blown a seal. Nah, said

  the other, wiping a drop from his bill, It’s ice cream.

  Freeze this moment. The penguin wore a benign

  and self-satisfied expression. The mechanic’s

  expression showed confusion and rising distaste.

  Then bit by bit the two swapped how they looked.

  The penguin showed hesitation and the mechanic

  had the critical demeanor of a man ready to correct

  the other. Isn’t this how it is with poetry? Both

  had examined a creation with multiple meanings

  as mystery moved from perplexity to possibility

  to discovery. The mechanic with neither patience

  nor learning again showed disgust; the penguin

  revealed revelation. Where would we be without

  language? The perception of one and confusion

  of the other could easily be expressed in a sonnet.

  Sad to say the mechanic hated poetry. As for the penguin,

  stuck to his brain with the nail of surprise was a sense

  of the human condition, which let him see himself

  afresh, and only arose after he’d worked to attain

  a modicum of meaning. Didn’t this explain his silly grin?

  As for the mechanic, his brain was blank, apart from

  intense revulsion: an emotion that lessened his chance

  for a humanistic vision. He didn’t get that poetry

  offers the opportunity to see the world through

  a pristine lens; and maybe, just maybe, if he stared

  hard enough, he might find himself staring back.

  Scale

  For Heather McHugh

  In the stratification of domestic perception,

  the man walks through the living room and notes

  the mantel’s pricey bric-a-brac; the child stares up

  at a light bulb, brighter than the sun beneath

  the floor lamp’s shade. For the dog, it’s knees

  and tabletops. For the cat, it’s the darting escapes

  of the small. Mouse, cockroach, and louse—worlds

  scaled to discriminating ambitions and dimensions.

  How easily overthrown when the man, in his hurry,

  stops and turns, puts a hand to his heart, and then

  drops past mantel, lamp, and tabletop—thump!

  Now his eyes focus on the coffee table’s claw foot,

  next on a single polished claw stretched toward

  a scrap of walnut hung up on filaments of carpet,

  a tidbit dropped by a grandson. After that, he spots

  specks of lint, dust motes that grow with his attention

  so huge they change into solar systems with planets

  where he might see cities, rooftops and, who knows,

  even a man mowing his lawn, if he had the time.

  But now his eyes fix on a vortex of pink spirals, ridges

  and rills whirling inward to the labyrinth’s still center

  where at last his focus stops. Why, look, it’s his own

  dear fingerprint. First there forever, and then not.

  Cut Loose

  Perhaps this is what death is like

  when the soul first separates

  from the body. He feels cut loose.

  Trees extend in all directions,

  gray columns to hold a cloudy day.

  Was it like this for her? It might

  have been like this. It’s late fall;

  dead leaves carpet the trail. Earlier,

  when he entered the forest, red paint

  marked the trees to show the way.

  Then he saw fewer; now he finds none.

  Cut loose from what? Cut loose

  from the living. Birds squabble

  among the leaves, sparrows or

  chickadees; he can’t tell which.

  The wind has stopped. Should he

  turn back? Who’s to say what’s back?

  Who’s to say he’ll find the last tree

  with its slash of red? What did it

  look like? A tree, that’s all, leafless,

  like the others. Was it like this for her,

  a constancy of gray? He wavers

  between reason and invention.

  It’s mid-afternoon; the sun sets early.

  Snowflakes seek out paths between

  a latticework of branches. Which

  way is forward? He’s been offered

  a collection of mistaken directions.

  The silence, surely she experienced

  a similar silence, its frigid palpability.

  What was it like for her at the end

  with the gray pressing in? He needs

  to see what she might have seen,

  to hear what she heard till he feels her

  nearby. Snow collects about his boots;

  deepening twilight, deepening cold.

  Death must be something like this:

  an absence within an absence. Cut loose

  from what? Cut loose from the world.

  He holds his breath to feel her close.

  She is nowhere; she is empty space.

  Damp fetor of decaying leaves.

  Recognitions

  The awful imbalance that occurs with age

  when you suddenly see that more friends

  have died, than remain alive. And at times

  their memory seems so real that the latest

  realization of a death can become a second,

  smaller death. All those talks cut off in midsentence.

  All those plans tossed in the trash.

  What can you do but sit out on the porch

  when evening comes? The day’s last light

  reddens the leaves of the copper beach.

  Laugh

  Hayden Carruth (1921–2008)

  What he wished was to have his ashes flushed

  down the ladies’ room toilet of Syracuse City Hall,

  which would so clog the pipes that the resulting

  blast of glutinous broth would douse the place clean

  much in the way that Heracles once flushed out

  the Augean stables. After serious discussion,

  his wife agreed to do the job. Such an action

  was in keeping with his anarchist beginnings,

  letting life come full circle and being his ultimate


  say-so on the topic of individual liberty. Luckily,

  or not, he then forgot, or wiser minds prevailed,

  I don’t know, and his ashes were packaged up

  for the obligatory memorial service—probably

  more than one—so the mayor and his council,

  all the lackeys, flunkies, toadies, and stoolies

  caught up in a shit-spotted cascade down those

  marble steps and into the astonished street

  is an event that exists first in my imagination

  and now in yours. But I’d also have you see him

  in those last days in his hospital bed in Utica’s

  St. Luke’s, wearing the ignominious blue and

  flower-specked nightie the nurses call a johnny,

  stuck with more tubes than a furnace has pipes,

  and contraptions to check every bodily function

  including the force of his farts, while his last bit

  of dignity was just enough to swell that fetid bag

  hanging like a golden trophy at the foot of his bed.

  Blind and half-paralyzed, a bloody gauze mitten

  to keep his hand from yanking out his piss-pipe,

  his skin hop-scotched with scabs and splotches,

  his hair and beard like the tossed off cobwebs

  of a schizophrenic spider, he listened, when

  those of us in the room felt certain he had fallen

 

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