In The Upstairs Window
for Judith
It was not all right when we got to your car and I saw the boxes
in the back seat, and you, laughing, asked me
did I want to go back to your house and help you pack.
You started talking about the weight of books, how much space
books take, how many boxes.
I want nothing to do with it.
Go home.
Pack it up.
Don't tell me it will still be the same.
There's a river through this landscape
and we ride away on it the way Cathy Fouloise's grandparents
rode their house downriver during the flood of '55,
the two of them in the upstairs window
waving good-bye. The front porch was stuck on shore
where the people stood watching
because there was nothing left they could do.
I keep wondering what it is we are all preparing for
going off to the new job in the next city——
It's difficult to refuse.
There's nobody to blame. You laugh assuring me
we will see each other even more than before.
Sometimes it seems we are each of us
under some kind of obligation
to learn how to walk away
as if we were all preparing for some grand
good-bye, the way it comes in the dreams I have
where the world ends and I stand in the field
watching bright blossoms flare on the horizon.
Looking across this distance, in the dream, I am
always wondering how much time we have.
There is a certain resignation
at that point, a strange new
silence, nothing more to be done.
I want nothing more to be done.
I want nothing to do with this move.
This week, I read twenty books of poems
in manuscript: words, syllables, sound
on top of sound. You can hear it
on each page, something palpable,
the attempt to bring back
people gone, places forgotten.
Sometimes I think all we're trying to do
with these reams of paper
is to stuff the mouth of this world, to stave
it off—those two lips, night
and day, the sound of the word
good-bye.
Route 88 West
----------for my daughter
I am driving you 350 miles away from home
and I am going to leave you with strangers.
I am driving you into your next life,
and I am going to leave you there.
You are snoring while I drive;
I feel like shaking you awake. I would think
one might sit tall in her seat, memorize
each tree, each field, each farm. For hours
it's been one green field after another,
the silver tops of silos like blunt steeples.
What book is this in, Amy, which dream? Since when
am I simply supposed to take you places, turn
around, walk away? Exhausted, your lips move
in your sleep. I tell you
it's one strange town after another-
names I can't pronounce.
The Children Who Haven't Stopped Moving
We rode the train through the north woods,
five children nodding like old men
at the familiar names: North Creek, Speculator.
Somebody behind us kept whispering, "Paradise."
There was an old woman in his arms. He shifted
his feet on the bare wood floor, held her waist
as if she were a baby with wings
threatening to fill the train with her gaggle.
The old man leaned over the seat: "She drinks too much."
We didn't say anything. "Who the hell told you kids
it would be any different?" We pretended to be asleep.
I lay back, dreamed of white moths
scraping their wings against the windows.
We were the lights about to go out.
I saw the dust from their backs
fill the glass; I always thought it was the dust
made them fly. I woke in a car of frost-
glazed windows. We began scratching our names
in the rime.
Behind us, he kept whispering, "If you don't like it,
just get up and move." There were no
other seats. We could see the woods animals
up in the tops of trees, waving at us, like grandmothers–
their white handkerchiefs flagging the breeze.
It Being a Free Country
Yesterday, swimming with you
arm over arm straight
to the center of the lake,
it occured to me
that what I really wanted to do
was to swim up behind you,
run my hands across your back down round
to your belly.
I wanted to turn you around,
feel your mouth on mine–
the water was its own
free country, opening
smooth and clean
around my body,
but I did nothing. I turned over,
floated on my back, said a word
or two to the blank
blue above me–
Later in the day, I was out
in the field, bare-breasted,
on my knees, picking blueberries.
The heat from the hill kept rising steady
and constant into my body. I was distracted
watching my breasts extend their roses,
their promises, their don't you want to touch us
down to the berries
ripening at the roots of the grass.
There on the hill where the berries
grew freely, I bent into the blue fruit
staining my knees, my mouth,
my lips...I let the sun-warmed berries
open themselves in my mouth, and considered
what I wanted to say to you–
how I wanted to touch you–
what I would do after that.
