—For Paul Hoover
Skip to the howls and the cows
will come home, hear the beating
of the tacks into the walls?
Nailed in like multiplication tables,
drilled into these tiny mahogany-headed
pupils dropping leaves to fall through minds,
drift across the autumns and,
thick-skulled, there go those dogs again
howling and squeaking (like some lucky beds),
or brand-new shoes on linoleum spit shined
(like some lucky lips), or lips reading
when the signs don’t flash language
and the records spin music in treetops,
scratched over and over scratched
(like some lucky backs), with thighs wrapped
around them, decorative as tutus, and
the active volcanoes are dressed for a fight,
throwing the towels in the hampers and
the cows sleep at night.
The dark had descended, nighttime was
a velvety hat, sat well upon all the heads
of field mice. Where? Well, they were
hidden underneath the davenport of course.
The world was in childish verses, deafened and sick
from the wonderful night animals, oh, be-
witched world! The world was under me whispering
nasty and soft, saying: You seem taller lately.
Somewhere deep in the cheese fields of the
Great Midwest, upon the bough of an old
cheese tree, we sat and sat and we told stories.
It was a pleasant time, with fruits ripening
and other things ripening and the sun shining
just so how it shines in the Midwest and other
things shining. It was past quitting time for the
migrants and so they had gone and migrated
home. It is a beautiful day for most people
either he said or I said and then one of us agreed
with the other. It is always nice to be agreed with and
we both felt so. We both felt deeply and we told
stories about other times when we had also felt
deeply. One of us lied but I do not know which.
The sun was drunk on its shining and so drunk drunk
that it made a fool of itself. We pretended not to notice.
It went to bed. Most things went to bed. We too
were tired but we did not go to bed. We were the
owls watching over the night critters. We
would not sleep and how could we? There were
so many, many stories still scuttling and about.
My heart was alone and having
what might have been a tender moment.
I could not tell. It seemed so still
and I asked, “Are you all right?”
but it did not answer me. It does this now
and often. I say, “So the weather’s nice.”
I say, “Haven’t heard much from you lately.”
I say, “Would you like a coffee?” I have grown
used to the silence although I cannot
say that it has grown used to me. I can
only guess at my heart’s moods
by the tiny clues it leaves. They are like
boot prints left out in a dust storm.
Before this quiet started, my heart
treated me differently. I was a friend to it,
a best friend to it, and it would tell me all about
all everything. It would just be an afternoon and
my heart would burst out with “I am a pogo stick!”
And then we might laugh until our bellies ached
because I would sigh something like,
“I am a tub of chocolate pudding.”
The whole wide world seemed
just like a whole wide world of afternoons.
Everything was pleasing to me and
I had not known that I was required to answer then.
Then when my heart had so quietly whispered,
“Rebecca, sometimes I am so scared that
I’ll suddenly forget what to do with this air.”
Today would feel so different if we were still speaking,
saying, “We are swarms of bees!”