Proverbial Drawing

Peter Cole

This world is like a ladder, one descends by it and another ascends.

—Midrash Rabbah, Ruth

I. HOW FAR

How far should he reach—

the line extends—knowing

it’s far from sound approach,

rung by abstract rung to heaven?

And where in relation to here

is there? Cut off? Is that right?

Or maybe it’s light he’s after,

or only a view, height

and distance from threats below,

which the ladder offers.

No! It’s all in the picture,

which this one echoes:

“I want, I want,” said Blake.

“I can’t, I can’t,” said the fake.

II. A RIGHT ANGLE SUPPORTS US HERE

I don’t understand, this cloud

which should rise, hangs

heavy and hovers. This leaded

whiteness mingles,

disperses dark and summons

at the same time the same.

There’s trouble there, but a platform

of sorts as well. You came

for a view of the cloud.

OK. Weather the storm.

III. THE LINE

This is harder, lower,

both more resolute and remote.

Nothing in the way of help here.

And so your spirit

floats there between … what?

Always between … That’s it.

That’s how it is: not quite

a jutting out as a fit-

ing awkwardly in.

Unavoidable. Usually

invisible. A not so fine

line inserted—see

it?—in everyone’s air—always

everywhere.

IV. IT’S TRUE

It’s true, but funny:

Time is honey.

V. THE HOUSE, THE CLOUD

In a desert a dwelling—

in the dwelling a desert?—

an encampment (an end to wandering)

with always a cloud before it,

by night a fire, and from it

stories emerged. The dwelling itself

had angles, and order, and a pitch

to its symmetry: There were books and shelves

of a kind, and when things were good,

it seemed there was more

air within than without. The cloud

held, it would hover,

for what sometimes felt like forever,

and they’d forget. But then it would lift,

and again they would wander, and remember.

Such was the house, the cloud, the gift.

VI. THE WRONG ANGLE RIGHTED

Once upon a time, there was a skyhook

that didn’t quite exist.

It was the stuff of legend, though not in a book,

and its story was frequently told, to trick us,

and others like us, when we were kids.

Suspended, somehow, from above,

it would lift our tent up over our heads,

creating a perfect complex peak: a roof.

Then it could be removed.

What it would hang from, we didn’t know,

or try to. But the notion compelled …

and so we were sent off, usually in pairs, to go

from camp to camp and ask if we could borrow

their skyhook. The man in charge always knew

how to answer: We lent ours out.

It’s two camps down, half-a-mile or so through

those woods. He’d point, and we’d trudge on, grumbling,

in search of that wondrous device,

the last word in wilderness dwelling,

which would make for us that immaculate crease

and yield, over our heads, a prize ceiling:

that weightless, matchless, unnerving and skyey

legend-like feeling of being,

at last, held up from on high.