Town Life

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.