Screen Dump 423

Irrespective of what . . . you ask? . . .
Irrespective of nothing . . . autopiloting
across the paint-by-number peoplescapes
the great ship's casualness . . .
curbside . . . stalled in the last quarter . . .
unbeknownst to all . . . and you . . . again . . .
following up as requested . . .
But requested by whom? . . .
Do you know? . . . Do you care? . . .
Suddenly everything recedes . . .
the chapter headings blur . . .
the entrance full of afternoons . . .
you meet the conundrum head on for lunch
underwritten by unknowns
who wait for emojis to translate the moments
which fade with every serving . . .
There will be a sharp turn in no time . . .
You're ready for this, yes? . . .

Ruven Afanador

Two by Donald Hall (1928-2018)

Her Long Illness

Daybreak until nightfall,
he sat by his wife at the hospital
while chemotherapy dripped
through the catheter into her heart.
He drank coffee and read
the Globe. He paced; he worked
on poems; he rubbed her back
and read aloud. Overcome with dread,
they wept and affirmed
their love for each other, witlessly,
over and over again.
When it snowed one morning Jane gazed
at the darkness blurred
with flakes. They pushed the IV pump
which she called Igor
slowly past the nurses' pods, as far
as the outside door
so that she could smell the snowy air.

The Ship Pounding

Each morning I made my way
among gangways, elevators,
and nurses’ pods to Jane’s room
to interrogate the grave helpers
who tended her through the night
while the ship’s massive engines
kept its propellers turning.
Week after week, I sat by her bed
with black coffee and the Globe.
The passengers on this voyage
wore masks or cannulae
or dangled devices that dripped
chemicals into their wrists.
I believed that the ship
traveled to a harbor
of breakfast, work, and love.
I wrote: "When the infusions
are infused entirely, bone
marrow restored and lymphoblasts
remitted, I will take my wife,
bald as Michael Jordan,
back to our dog and day." Today,
months later at home, these
words turned up on my desk
as I listened in case Jane called
for help, or spoke in delirium,
ready to make the agitated
drive to Emergency again
for readmission to the huge
vessel that heaves water month
after month, without leaving
port, without moving a knot,
without arrival or destination,
its great engines pounding.

Become Ocean

Listening to it we become ocean.
          - John Cage on the music of Lou Harrison

You become ocean . . . tangoing

with Joycean footnotes
an out-and-back watery trance
with John Luther Adams
at the end of the blur
the same views not the same
from opposite directions . . .
your words triadic harmonies which
despite the welts marching up your arm
attributable to the strands of poison ivy
that hitched a ride into your house
on the back of the standard black short-hair
who presides over your domain
and whose mewling will continue to crescendo
until you replenish his food dish
release us from us
into metaphysical reveries of blueness.
Your obsession
with the somnambulistic leanings
and bad press
of weedwhackers
segues to March 28, 1941
a little before noon
when Virginia Woolf
with hat walking stick overcoat
and large stone
wades into the River Ouse drowning herself.
She was an escape artist
who mapped the extraordinariness
of the interior
not unlike Anthony Bourdain
who wanted to be remembered as an enthusiast
introducing us to the wonderful world of food
in all its wonderfulness
before hanging himself
in a hotel room in eastern France . . .
so too the once-abandoned drive-in
on Route 32
now resuscitated revitalized and welcoming
with fanfares
for the common man and common woman.
Become ocean . . . all become ocean.
We hold these truths to be self-evident
prestidigitating words words words
into cauldrons of delight
the double double toil and troublers
given 24 hours to get outta Dodge
while you like Proust
for a long time going to bed early
seduce the watcher at the gate
slip past the dozing Rottweilers
in the warm fragrant kitchen
and into the hidden room
behind the stacks in the library
to gaze upon hundreds of portraits of beauty
from the comfort of a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
white leather Barcelona chair
circa 1929
before being eyeblinked back
to Tanglewood
surrounded by shadowy strangers
plodding toward the parking lot
united in their quest
for their anxious vehicles
chomping at the bit to traverse
lonely upstate two-lanes
on their late-night return trip home.