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The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech

Page 5

by Dobyns, Stephen;


  absurd to use a ballpoint pen

  for a task like this, a challenge,

  for which he’d also bought a new,

  but antique, rolltop desk recently

  restored, with matching chair,

  also not cheap, and for which

  he’d renovated the attic room with

  pine-paneled walls, bookshelves,

  and a good light for his new office

  or weekend office, a place planned

  for many years, even before college,

  back in high school in fact, a resolve

  rare in his life, but about which

  he’d dreamed in free moments

  at work, and which kept him

  sane during those tedious years

  of doing the taxes for strangers,

  but now at last begun, excitingly

  begun, as he leaned forward with

  pen raised to put down on paper

  the first word of his first novel.

  Jump

  Then he trips and falls splat on the walk,

  tangling his feet, jumping too quickly

  from crack to crack, leaps that felt like

  flying as he pushed off with red Keds,

  sneakers got that morning with money

  from collecting empties, selling seeds,

  candy door to door, shoveling sidewalks

  in winter, raking leaves and of course

  help from those above, being how he

  regards his mom and dad, those above,

  sounding at once cordial, but distant,

  which was how he liked it, a decent

  separation from the ones who held

  the other end of the leash, those above;

  galloping down the block, knowing

  the names of dogs in every house,

  a few nice, a few not; feeling his body’s

  Superboy power when he had earlier

  slammed open the front door, sprinted

  across the porch and leapt with arms

  outstretched; a fighter jet, nearly flying,

  but only jumping, a boy leaping, having

  not yet grasped the line that separates

  what might happen from what might not.

  What Happened?

  Taking first a morsel of squash,

  then a bit of bread—an elegant

  gray rat with glossy pelt, steps

  lightly across the compost heap,

  his best loved spot, unaware

  of the source of such largesse,

  not having linked these gifts

  to the mother who wears a path

  from house to dump, or from

  the disgusted to the grateful

  as inside the house her toddler

  flicks another splop of beets

  onto the floor with carrots soon

  to follow; what fills the child

  with indignation is for the rat

  attained ambition, a trickle down

  bounty, or so the rich might

  have us think as they dole out

  peanuts to the poor, making

  the mom a middle-class flunky

  who believes she’s doing goodly

  work. Is this the case? Not quite.

  Instead she asks what happened,

  as she recalls photos from the past:

  her son’s birth, her wedding, college,

  winding her way back to fourth grade,

  to one of those frigid winter days

  when half the kids are dreaming

  and she maps out a future of slashing

  through a tangle of Amazon jungle,

  a deadly snake in one hand, eager

  to capture a jaguar with the other.

  Philosophy

  Nihilism, but not in a negative

  sense—such was his thought,

  what else to call it? Like snow

  inside a novelty snow globe,

  vague possibility descended

  from probability, descended

  from likelihood and certainty.

  Now not even air. Those great

  words discussed in college—

  truth, beauty, justice, which

  had come to embarrass him,

  like teasing bare-breasted

  girls in postcards sent from

  Polynesian islands that each

  year he had found less likely;

  absolutes faded like old shirts,

  as still he tried to create from

  stray thoughts as if out of wood-

  chips and mud, the old certainties

  he once loved, the believable lie.

  Melodrama

  A gunshot: the trigger so light

  he’d hardly known he pulled it;

  another man’s pistol grabbed from

  an antique table with clawed feet

  that he had bought last week—

  before the fight and her departure—

  bought driving to Memphis, the late

  honeymoon they had been planning,

  not realizing the antique salesman

  was such a rascal, the same rascal

  who’d shown up at their wedding

  in Knoxville, oh, two months back,

  a wedding in an art gallery with

  watercolors by his cousin, delicate,

  gray landscapes of the Smokies,

  the cousin who’d brought the friend

  nobody knew, an antique dealer

  who flirted with his wife, his bride,

  a girl he had loved since high school,

  since tenth-grade history, the teacher—

  whose name he couldn’t remember—

  who he’d once helped change a tire

  on her van when she broke down

  high up on the parkway and where

  the boy had stared across the valley,

  as if at a string of tomorrows, their

  abundant on-goingness to the haze-

  shaded horizon, an April morning,

  the valley with its meandering river,

  white barns, cows like black pinpricks.

  Exercise

  Luckily, he hadn’t broken his neck,

  had fallen instead into tall grass

  when he’d slipped from the saddle

  after letting go the reins, an accident,

  but even so his first time on a horse,

  a ten-year-old gelding, chestnut

  with one white stocking, guaranteed

  to be slow and responsible along

  the trails through the pine woods;

  a stable they saw each day, driving

  into the city where he still worked,

  having sworn the previous evening

  to change his life, but nothing too

  drastic, only some mild exercise

  to please his wife, who never quite

  bullied him, who surely loved him,

  and who, he knew, deserved better;

  a small gesture taking less than half

  an hour, because what was the word

  she had shouted at him? Sedentary.

  Failure

  I’m sorry, I’m expecting someone else,

  speaking as he stood in front of her table,

  but not raising her head, as he stuttered,

  May I, May I . . . sweat beading his brow,

  having just nearly tripped over the curb,

  as he stepped forward, intent on asking,

  May I buy you lunch? . . . gasping for breath

  from sprinting across four lanes packed

  with cabs, which he had side-stepped

  and leapt across, to frustrate their wish

  to squash him flat, as he again repeated,

  Would you join me tonight for dinner?—

  and this after he’d been compelled to wait

  for the turtle-advance of an uptown bus,

  the exhaust stranding him in an aggravated,

  black cloud of e
xpectation, as he practiced

  the phrase, I’d like to get to know you better,

  deciding this was best after he had first seen

  her figure, a green blouse off one shoulder,

  the very raison d’état of his departure from

  the further curb with his eyes focused upon

  her outside table, convinced his wisest course

  was to break loose of all timidity and shout,

  I want to screw you till the cows come home,

  sweet cakes; since hadn’t he been helpless

  once he had seen her lovely and expectant—

  robins twittering, tulips blooming—and his

  ardent self all set to break out? He knew it.

  Constantine XI

  —May 29, 1453

  And he was never seen on this earth again,

  having rushed forward with sword raised

  toward the crowd of Turks boiling through

  the breach in the wall, after first casting off

  his crown and purple robes, so to be taken

  for a common soldier and thrown down

  in a common grave, buried with the others

  to keep the enemy from parading his head

  proudly through the cities of their empire,

  this being his only choice—The city has

  fallen and I remain alive.—last of the last,

  God’s representative on earth, ruling

  a fragment of a city, still the seat of Rome

  after eleven centuries, his army just a sliver

  the size of the enemy’s hundred thousand,

  some of his soldiers being priests, slaves,

  shopkeepers, even women, still protecting

  a scrapheap, once the richest, largest, and

  most beautiful, to be sacked for three days,

  universities destroyed, libraries destroyed,

  palaces and churches, schools and gardens,

  citizens hunted down and slaughtered.

  What alternative but to rush forward?

  Remember him when your time comes.

  Literature

  Just midnight. Footsteps stop

  by the outside door. Inside

  he keeps alert, feels the rapid

  beating of his heart, listening

  to feet scraping up the walk,

  having heard a car door slam.

  Who had he been expecting?

  Nobody. He’d been reading

  a novel by the fireplace, one

  with scenes so violent they’d

  stick in his head all week—

  disembowelment, decapitation—

  a book lent him by a neighbor

  he’d never liked, who revved

  his Harley Sunday mornings,

  tossed around the trash cans;

  a man with whom he’d fought only

  this morning when his dog tore up

  the black-eyed Susans, swearing

  to murder the dog, which, for sure,

  he’d never do, he only wanted

  to scare the man, make him sweat,

  but who that afternoon lent him

  the book he couldn’t put down

  that seized him like a rope squeezing

  his throat. To make up, the man said,

  to clean the slate; a man unknown

  to tell the truth, who’d formed a plan

  as fearful as murder, a stranger

  at his door late at night, a sudden

  shriek, and a book to soften him up.

  You’ll love it, the neighbor said.

  Jism

  And shot his wad all over the wall,

  but wasn’t that bound to happen

  in the pitch black room when he’d

  missed the correct orifice and fell

  back, and she whooshing beneath him

  like an engine building steam; this being

  the trouble with arousal, the paradox

  of rushing ahead of himself, the hasty

  projection and hapless failure, because

  it wasn’t the first time; and it took place

  despite the pricey ointments, vitamins,

  New Age meditation, stabs at distraction,

  like imagining pushing a red Cadillac up

  an icy parking ramp while the inevitable

  debacle hung in the air like the dirigible

  Hindenburg over Lakehurst, New Jersey,

  before its own tumescence discharged

  in flames; and so he quickly polished up

  the old excuses: e.g., a superabundance

  of passion, for didn’t she bring to mind

  Anita Ekberg frolicking in Trevi Fountain,

  a splashing that did the reverse of putting

  a damper on his ardor, or he might boast

  he’d blasted a warning shot across her bows,

  or he frets about making a racket, getting

  decrepit, feeling carsick, smelly armpits,

  a list falling from likely to silly, as his fearless

  Don Juan is morphed into a figure of fun?

  Valencia

  For Stuart Phillips

  Droplets of water hang from the rusted ceiling

  inside the butcher’s truck as clouds of steam

  rise from six slick bodies, like prayers ascending

  to an empty heaven; six bulls suspended upside

  down from hooks, and stripped of their hides,

  pink and wet, their black hooves jutting straight

  out, like a lost argument’s second thoughts,

  heads sawn off, severed necks nearly touching

  the mix of water and blood, the floor’s lake:

  accept this afterlife, the dead flesh still alight

  from living exertion, vapor surrounded and

  slashed open from where the pretty killers

  had thrust their sharp points during a fifteen-

  minute rush between certain accomplishment

  and certain defeat; the work begun by a blare

  of trumpets as the double doors banged open

  and each creature took its turn—shiny, dark,

  and self-assured—to charge a few steps into

  the ring, then pause to acknowledge the crowd’s

  shout, their great heads erect, the needle-tips

  of their horns pivoting left and right—how strange

  we must have looked to them—their front legs

  all but dancing over freshly swept sand, and eager,

  surely eager, like someone at the start of life.

  Thanks

  For Rick Mann

  Your friend grabbing your wrist, as he hung

  from the rusty metal ladder, calling out, Do

  you need help?—the ladder fixed by bolts

  to the concrete abutment sticking into

  the river above the falls, your fingernails

  dragging bit by bit over the rough stone

  with your legs at the lip of plunging water,

  and you being powerless to pull them back,

  the current being too strong, grasping that

  you’d soon be swept into the white cauldron

  below—the result of not seeing the current

  was pulling you into the center of the river,

  as you’d half-swum, half-floated, supposing

  a few strokes would take you to shore. So

  what did you think might happen out of all

  the decreasing possibilities? Why, nothing

  at all, as you stared up at blue sky and trees

  coming into full leaf, because why think

  in such glorious weather? So you didn’t notice

  you were gathering speed as you floated under

  the small bridge; so you hadn’t considered

  anything but pleasure when you first waded

  into the water, leaving your sandals on the bank,

  the current no more than a gentle tug, a dip

  befo
re dinner, as you thought of the evening

  ahead—your wife, a movie, a book—but not

  of the river where many swam, but not past

  the bridge; stepping into the river, secure

  in your belief in ongoing tomorrows, which

  was stupid, stupid, because soon you’d be

  an instant from being swept over the falls.

  Then would you still think you could determine

  the end of an action at the start of an action

  as you had done when drifting downstream,

  because, really, what is the meaning of safety?

  A dream, an ambition? Why, nothing at all.

  PART FIVE

  Persephone, Etc.

  The man with silver hooks instead of hands

  picks apart a pomegranate on a park bench

  as the sun malingers about the sky. It is hot

  in the plaza and royal palms bring no relief.

  Wicked monkeys wank among the fronds.

  See him as an ex-sailor whose risky ventures

  gobbled up his tender digits. It’s market day

  and treasure seekers haggle over odds and ends.

 

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