For Ann Beattie
It strikes me as the best of every world
this morning as I leave the house at nine
and walk uptown, past shuttered houses
I have learned by heart down to the angle
of each sloping roof, all kinds of siding
and their various degrees of disrepair.
I’ve memorized the shrubbery and lawns,
with each reflective of their owners’ minds,
the blend of trees, some planted by the town
in 1920, others here by chance,
a drift of wind, or someone’s purpose.
Today September-blooming mountain laurels
burn with flowers to fill the gaps where long-
necked elms once made a tunnel of their leaves.
I know this sidewalk as a blind man knows
his way around his house: the tilting flagstones
and the gravel drives, macadam stretches
that will heave with frost by mid-December.
And my joints adjust to ups and downs
as I proceed, half drunk on air, on night-
rinsed grasses and the gilt-edged leaves
that riffle in the slightest wind with that
low rustling tinny note of early fall,
a note of loss that makes me savor
what befalls each step: the wedge of geese
that arrows overhead between slate roofs,
the exoskeletons of huge black ants
that file like soldiers through the Khyber Pass
to certain failure in the winter’s grip,
the squirrels rippling in gray blurs up trees
with preservations in their iron jaws.
There’s so much going on I’ll never know
but happily assume has its own pattern;
I have mine, which fits into the town’s
slow ritual so well no doubt you’ll wonder
if some parts of me were not lopped off
to make this fitting. Wouldn’t I prefer
to wake at dawn in country heaven, acres
of raw land around my house, with crops to tend
and cows dew-lapping through the shallow swales?
Some friends cut wood to save their souls
while I burn oil; they hike into the hills
for rustic solace as I walk these streets.
I’ve other friends who live in cities and believe
in motion multiplied by will, the swirl
of faces, calendars with no blank spaces left.
Their lives are verticals of glass and steel.
I don’t begrudge them what they’ve found to work.
I’m all for anything that makes you feel
the gravity afoot, the tug of light
particulars, the sway of chosen hours,
though I love town life and its appointments
of well-paced events, the tower that chimes,
life in concentric circles that acknowledge
morning, noon, and night, the falling seasons
that enforce their rules, make us accede
to larger motions than we make ourselves.
I love the neighboring of little towns,
the expectations that are often met
by characters we greet with friendly nods:
the waitress at the diner where I drink
my de-caf coffee, one old cop who never
says hello, too charged with duty to descend
to pleasantries on county time, the dozen
keepers of the dozen shops who fill my life
with necessary objects, food, and service.
Their worlds depend upon my morning walk,
my needs and whims. And so we live in
symbolic swirl around the center
of the village green: its white gazebo
like a hub of sorts, the centrifugal
aim of all our motion, though it’s really
useless as a building goes, except for
concerts by the local bands on summer nights.
That white gazebo is the town’s real heart:
a minor symbol of nostalgic longing
for our fictive past amid the hubbub
of our daily work in buildings shaped
to useful ends: the Greco-Roman banks
with much more cash than anybody needs
to make one life, the small post office
that can ship our mail to Bognor Regis
or Addis Ababa without any hitch.
It seems that we can eat our cake and have it,
although wisdom votes against that thought.
I use the royal “we” perhaps too glibly,
since I’ll never stand for public office
or consent to join the Rotary or Elk.
(My love of town life doesn’t go that far.)
Whatever else I do, I’ll fill these streets
with all the shambling presence I can muster
for enough good years to say I’ve been here
and have met them well on equal terms.
I’ll be one spoke in this bright wheel
that spins through decades at its chosen speed,
that passing airplanes notice like a dime
in heavy grass—a glint of silver—
something they would probably pick up
if only it were not so far away.