ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: IN A VALLEY Adam Pellegrini, Master of Fine Arts, 2011 Thesis directed by: Professor Joshua Weiner Department of English In a Valley collects poems united by a consistent tension in voice, as the poet attempts to balance two competing impulses towards ?meaning??through musicality and through statement. By integrating these elements, the writer searches for a distinctive voice within the many spheres of influence?of his predecessors, teachers, peers, and of his unique experience. Though the poems collected here do contain a few similar strains in subject and method, each of the three sections centers, instead, around a different activity: longing, worry, and pursuit. IN A VALLEY by Adam Pellegrini Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts 2011 Advisory Committee: Professor Joshua Weiner, Chair Professor Michael Collier Professor Stanley Plumly ? Copyright by Adam Pellegrini 2011 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS A Voice (Lonesome) 1 I Husking Avocados to the Grateful Dead 5 Picking Strawberries 6 Going Back 8 Snowfall in New York 9 Apology 12 On Love & Poetry 13 II Dawn Fire at Smithsonian Storage Complex 17 Mother in Backyard 18 Suzanne 19 In a Valley 20 Puffballs 22 Scenes from Church Camp 24 As if the Burglar Actually 32 III Dusk 34 Beach Walk Late with Baby Dolphins & Boats 35 Hosta Bed & Sprinkler 37 Home for the Weekend 38 Adirondack Anaconda 40 The Poet Dreams of His Father 41 1 A Voice (Lonesome) In the mud I wait all night, the stinking trench I dug today. Fasted hard, no eggs or water lilies, the stuff you pass in sunny parks & smell, sure, but never look on or count. I do. & if I reach a number I can?t name?hasn?t happened yet. Have no hair for breeze. Plucked each: one hundred five thousand seven hundred forty four. Rolled them in paper bark I peeled, then buried. Sometimes the skin, if I?m too long in shallows, hangs that way, loose bark you can?t help but pull. Burns the same, too, all smoke & ember. Brings us back to smelling, or waiting? both? All night I wait & sniff, but only dandelions, goose dung come down the hill with breeze, & musk? the worst. Met a fox once who thought my toes were eggs. One million two hundred thousand seven hundred forty four hairs on a fox. I keep them by a tree I know. Sometimes I climb there. Good hunting, always squirrels up top. You just need shake & whole nests of young can fall one hundred eighty nine feet down from a good branch. I fell once, myself. Wish I could say limbs only bend & shake a bit like trees do when you?re pitched upon them. Not like glass, the bones, either. For glass you need sand & fire, twenty-four hundred degrees. You need movement, turning so the bulb won?t sag to one side, blowing gently from afar. A little like glass, I suppose?bubble of breath in the chest. Bones won?t burst like new glass bursts, though, if left in cool overnight. There?s night again, & waiting. & air. Mud, too, sort of?sand is like mud sometimes, or do I mean silt? Never burned silt. Not burning these sleeping eggs, either, not yet. Waiting for frogs that are eggs now. All night. Takes long, I know. There?s night again. Things asleep all around us? Wait. I didn?t mean I burst too. I don?t. Like sky bursts in hot season?s clothes for a stretch of weeks. Or frogs burst tiny & mute in shallows from ten thousand eggs in one big rupture across days, one thundercloud for weeks. Or guns at night. In mornings during pheasant season. Cold out then. Water?s a shock, a loud noise on skin. Guns at night, though?the worst. Never like that. More like window glass on cement divider. Skull on window glass?bone shatters when pressed too hard. Burst implies outward motion from a central event? 2 noise spreading from gun barrels, tadpoles spreading from ripe frogspawn, lightning from a struggle of charges air conducts between positive clouds, negative earth? WAIT. I only mean to say I won?t. Many things I will & have?not have as in possess, but have as in I can?t or won?t tell you when. So many things I have or will, but this I won?t, I promise. In parks where you stroll & smell of soap in fresh grass, three hundred blades per square inch, I promise, hear mallards with heads even greener, iridescent. I don?t come when you drop torn bread for drakes shuffling to greet you, though I?m hungry, & ducks on land have one less defense. I wait till night for ducks to sleep. No one ever misses a duck. Not like those nasty swans you see go smoothly by. I know you?d miss them, you keep count of their couples, name them, project a bit, I?m sure. Never miss a duck, I?ll bet, though they?re friendly. What will swans eat? Duckweed, for one. But not the bread from your hands, not the way you want, at least, without some hand too. I?d never, I promise. But swans have no teeth, you say, are like infants? infants with twenty four thousand feathers, I?d reply. I wait. In parks with sun & smells & children all gone by night. Paddle boats docked. Parking lots dark. Entrance chained. No way in but by foot. No way out but by foot. Long trek to town with most houses dark by 11:33, latest. TV at night through windows. Sometimes I watch late when a person sleeps through till morning, their screen broadcasting blue & ticklish. I draft songs to fill the mouths I can?t hear?do fa Do, do fa Do do fa Do ray so Ray, ray so Ray ray so Ray?on up the scale one step at a time. If the characters yell, I add dissonance? te fa La, te fa La te fa La. Proportions in a major scale? whole whole half whole whole half whole. Pythagoras saw similar tones between planets: Earth?whole?moon, moon?half?Mercury, Mercury?half?Venus, Venus?one & a half?sun, & so on up a blues-like pattern ending at fixed stars where Earth resolves? I counted each, you know, or tried: ten thousand million two hundred twenty thousand five hundred seventy: one galaxy. Took six months, each clear night, but then I saw they?d shifted so I?d counted many twice, had to shift, too, or give up. I don?t give up, you see. Once, I fought so long, 3 a croc had me by torso & spun like an outboard propeller; kept hitting my feet on a sunken log I knew, used to lie upon in sun a few miles from here. Water?s surprisingly clear before wet season loosens all the mud from hills & fields into tributaries. Two hundred twenty five thousand six hundred forty four scales on a croc?s ventral trunk alone. Stacked them on my favorite rock as Celts did to mark their graves, or Buddhists do sometimes by rivers, glued them down with pastes of marrow softened above low flames at night?s end when some noises start & all the people, I know, will soon return & want to walk without burning. I damp the heat with my belly & suffer through. My needs are selfish, endless, I know, not perfect yet. So I wait. Practice waiting. Practice wanting. You believe in death, yes??Wait, I only mean to come to some common terms here. What you believe, I?ll believe, I promise. Tell me: out of time & space, what numbers are there? What people, things? Where can a body hide? Here?s what I want: your hands your feet your cheeks now, your back your calves your toes, not eggs, your joints your bones, now, your muscle, all thirty six in your face, your hairs, each one, your skin your blood your nails, now, not for any reason but to keep you here for good, I promise, your back your toes, said that, your lashes lips your marrow your tendons knuckles ankles cartilage your knees your viruses infections germs your neurons synapses your hormones regrets amours memories your chemicals & so on & so on up & down the tones of your body, even those low notes you make as you walk in grass on sunny days, awhile since rain has swelled the dirt, & smell of green & wash the blue & lean against a stone & read & feel my mud between your toes, my clouds, my rays, my breeze I?ve weighed, I wait, the earth I?ve dug & leaked, you stroll on sinking down the water?s shore in air & never notice trunks or spawn or dead right there. 4 I 5 Husking Avocados to the Grateful Dead The green pulp is soft as a line of notes, of which three are happening at once: music humming from speakers, the hum you offer back, & how it all seems in your head like a single, perfect pitch. There is discord in the avocado, too. As you run a knife across its equator & twist it in half?around the nut-like, brown middle, a rich green tone, ripe as spring foliage, with exception? the dark cloud tie-dying one whole side. How easily happiness comes when pushing lime, salt, & garlic under the back of a spoon into a sunlit bay, that sort of opaque green. & how easily happiness goes between pitch, rising in octaves to harmonize with itself? even if you split the pad of your index dicing cilantro, even if half the opened fruit is black, there is still this music, melody in a mode of uplift. It makes you soft, makes you small, makes you empty yourself all afternoon singing that line, this is all a dream we dreamed. 6 Picking Strawberries When the fruit stays on its stem in dirt & sun so long dense with sugar, pigment dark as a basin of blood, it takes on the look of everything soft? seat cushions, clouds, cheeks. You?d almost never guess the heavy red of mid-August first jutted green from June vines. It was so when the two of you on a whim driving back roads, sun on her arm out the window, saw a plywood sign painted crudely, arrow & berries, but didn?t figure this? bent after an hour in heat, still parting stalks & leaves to find the perfect morsels, just swirling into maturity, past pale, but still firm. You felt the plastic basket heavy on one arm, noticed how the rows stretched on, offering new plants possibly not picked over these last two lovely weekends. Then, you looked to her forehead, saw too much sun, looked to ground dry where shade cloth gave over to dust at your feet, wondered how they kept the beds tucked in water. Looked up the aisle leading back to your car & AC, then to her basket, closer than yours to completing the challenge: first to reach the brim with only the finest berries. In short, you began to settle. 7 First, a bit too dusty, then a small gash; finally, you plucked your first past prime. Red stained your chin as you mouthed it, all lips, stained your wrist as you wiped. But how it moved through you, sweat & soot, burst of nectar barely feigning solid form, a tongue dissolving sweetly yours. 8 Going Back Rain seems drawn in diagonal, cartoon lines if one stares long enough at a point in air instead of tracking drops. Body?s a blur, too, when taken up in single moments? you hit by bike sat & dwelled over you not hit by bike, rubbing his bloody knee. As now, you parked in front of childhood house plays with you climbing low dogwood & you skinning elbow on driveway like two dolls. Never an impressive imagination, & so this you has you picking through lavender for Easter eggs jump kick like an action figure you running lawn circles barefoot, then has them whisper threatening quips out of breath & continue their battle midair, ribs crushed between forefinger & thumb. More of you join in, a million or so riot in the rain, sopping, swearing oaths of vengeance, somersaulting to perch atop the horse chestnut tree, the basketball hoop (especially you who dreamed of dunking in gym class) only to emerge again swinging some new weapon. Until spiny air calls this you back, & the million bodies fall limp. Again a plot you didn?t invent: after you drives into the unzipped sleeping bag, afternoon, they all stand & waltz stiffly. Tchaikovsky?s on the radio, wreaths & rain changing over to snow. Such awful new brown shutters on the second floor, & someone?s basketball left out cold with dimples. 9 Snowfall in New York ?when DC should blizzard too. So far, a few flakes like so many business men have plunged by. The ground should all be white like baking soda, whose uses are innumerable: mix a paste with epoxy to stop the window?s leaks forever, or scrub empty every pore in your face, waiting for the upstate world you once knew: snowy lashes, raw hands, snow & honey in a cup. Today, DC?s a bubble in the mid-Atlantic, the coast up to Connecticut insulated by whole feet. In southern New York, a hundred miles outside the city, where you were a boy in winter, they?re lifting heavy squares from walkways, straining to make piles. Road crews stop for coffee between shifts, dogs bite snowballs midair, the village stores run out of milk, bread, & eggs. But here, the streets keep dry, clouds are spent. Interns & legal aids call home to Carolina or Jersey. You tell your father use the blower, save his back as sirens round your block for who knows what. Same sirens every day, noise the same direction. Constant problems: muggings, car windows, fires, break-ins, stray bullets. Nice to visit Virginia?s woods & stars for the weekend, where no one asks for money; but now, you can?t even do that? an hour in all directions, the snow?s up to six inches. Seems a government technology keeping schools & offices open, no other reasonable answer? *** 10 Near Lake George, New York, where your father was a boy in winter, you?re sure they?ve seen their share of storm today. You?ve listened to so many stories over the years about snow drifting off the lake, sitting heavy on their back porch or piling against the barn where your grandmother kept a studio that faced the old Sagamore Hotel?a word designating distinction for Mohicans?where all the city industrialists with mansions along ?Millionaire?s Row? on the lake?s west shore would come to spa. Your grandmother painted sun on the hills & water in morning, but never those houses or that Victorian resort splayed out on a wide green island just across the lake. Your father would wake some mornings in his room built off the kitchen with snow on his bed, no heat when they first moved in from Jersey, just a wood stove, gaps in windows. On your wall, you look sometimes & study her strokes, some of them flaked off now, 50 years since she flew to Arizona &, looking out over a canyon, had a vision, it seems, of pines reaching up to touch the ancient cliff dwellings on a far ridge. Hard to make out, from her boxy strokes, the ledges natives built their homes into, but easier to see her point: the gap of air, of time & culture all muddying the scene, or protecting it? You look out your window at a man who?s shouting at some white mother fucker to get off his block, stop testing him, though he?s alone on the street. These moments are rare in your neighborhood, where rows of homes that 30 years ago housed the working class now start at a million, if off-street parking is available. 11 You won?t tell your parents about this man, who you think you?ve seen before in the park around the corner. *** This time of year, your father would sometimes go down to watch the ice boats sail racing across the wintered lake; or later, with friends some school days, fish-tail around the slick back roads of Bolton Landing, with one of the few cops in town, also the gym coach, trying to keep up. In either story, it seems escape is possible?it won?t snow here, & yet the snow won?t let you leave, or maybe there?s something else keeping you? The times when a blizzard did block you in? When you labored to reach the Korean grocers to buy the last ripe avocado, your sneakers soaked, how pines in the park shrugged softly under their weight? Or in spring, on fragrant walks down to the Capitol? how the gardens come up in such neat colors, such exotic hedges trimmed by landscapers who nod & go on in Spanish as you pass? Maybe you belong somewhere else, in a cabin by an upstate lake with the snow coming down on hills. Or maybe that snow should visit here more often. Mohican translates to people of the waters that are never still, & it?s true, their tribe migrated to so many places in the time since settlers found the Hudson River Valley, centuries before your ancestors arrived in Manhattan. Maybe nowhere is home to anyone anymore. Or maybe it?s some other word than home. 12 Apology Two men are chasing my girlfriend down a street that moves when I reach to touch it. The thing about touch is that though you feel the sidewalk through your socks, there?s always a thin energy separating skin from cotton from cement. Because atoms can?t meet, they can lie in bed together all afternoon listening to music, then finish the last ten cans in the pack, twirling & dipping in the kitchen, but will always want to take in more? a gulp of whiskey, a large cheese pie, the tender mollusk in her mouth. Maybe the street, like we two atoms, has to calm itself back in place after each step tries to collide with it. With no shame, wandering back with our food, she peels a sticker from a stranger?s bumper while the owner & his friend watch drunk from their porch. Meanwhile, I litter the garden with all I drank tonight & want her back, how it curves to say she?s excited. Too quiet. & then the melody of my name called out above a clatter of boots. I can?t move, though my hands want contact with whatever she?s running from. I can?t. Though later I?ll say I tried. 13 On Love & Poetry I Something you never see in real life: the image of a heart, not the bruised-fruit organ, but the twin-humped, rose-red, balanced-on-a-tip symbol above nutrition labels claiming extra iron. From the train, a silhouette of two needs: one, eyes closed, the other facing away, tipped in opposite directions, balanced on a kiss?shape that flutters about the skulls of smitten cartoons, but never graces trains passing station ends, behind escalators. I have seen a dozen teens sprint back there yelling fuck & him & up, have seen sleepers & millers-about, but mostly figures waiting, each station a new stasis to pull into: women with strollers, old men in full-brimmed hats, business folk with clothes that fit, all waiting to pass onto another station you left stops ago. 14 II You there, tell them to wait, all day if they must. It?s lovely somewhere down that passage, something trapped in the Metro you don?t see, but feel at times flirt down your neck, press your jaw corners. You who I could love on a deck overlooking pond water, big pines, down of darkness. Where we could fume like wine bottles, leaking from our mouths in the cool, geese asleep. But never in the hollowed city I?ve dug for you here, never with such an audience streaming by, incredulous. I say love & they shutter at my clich?. You may think of this later in the shower, or dropping your keys by the back door. Not fair. You decide when we part. I have no photo to put to no words about your life. I picture you outside a reading or in your front yard picking mint in a summer storm, but it isn?t you. You?re somewhere, some time I can only guess. I?m streaming below the streets where basil won?t grow & birds sometimes are trapped, flap about screaming. This isn?t the love I mean, the heart with wings, the eastern bluebird bright on gray walls of your brain matter. There is no water here, but the rain tracked in on windows, sometimes puddling near rails. Picture for me our reflection in that water as we look down to count the rats, a game we?d make of standing still together. They?d sip slowly from our image, love, so used to the sight. 15 III Right now, come in, steep your tea, warm your socks: find me here, waiting to realize what I mean by love: the couple who woke bare this morning & fucked again, showered for work, still embracing, post-coital as I passed pulling into Shaw/Howard. This is love. I feel it so, at least. Or serendipity: I noticed their heads made the symbol for what they did. Isn?t love mostly chance, a thing we feel in moments we can?t predict? There I go again. At least know there is distance here, too, even with so little space between their bodies. They?ll stand, board the next train. He?ll get off in two stops, Mount Vernon/Convention Center. She?ll stay, ride down to L?Enfant & transfer, watching for lights that mark track changes in the stream of black between stations. He?ll watch a woman?s ass in black elastic fabric who turns into Starbucks & consider getting coffee before work. She?ll think of a high school boyfriend when someone nearby mentions the Braves, whose games they drank through together that whole summer? I?m projecting. But isn?t love mostly projection? In that way, I love you: your hair, your scent, your opinions. How, together, we notice where the homeless sleep, plan to travel, turn off the news together: city?s fires, strikes, gunshots, poor. Together we read the couple in the Metro. We read the boys with blood on their shoes, the old men dying for the past, the mothers scolding their young, or being scolded. We love dumb movies. You read poetry, I am poetry. You correct me when I explain our plot, how we met, to friends on the back deck of your Aunt?s cottage in the Catskills, when we finally get away for real? we?ll drink shitty upstate wine, discuss tannins. I?ll hold your hair as the sun sets, puking out pink. I?m sorry. I?ve made you a poem, too, one I can revise later. Not fair. I decide how we part. 16 II 17 Dawn Fire at Smithsonian Storage Complex Real smoke, not truck exhaust or some shear slip silky from a row house chimney not even white biceps of factory stacks real smoke is ash petals cupping summer not the smoke of campfires, sticks cracking in heat, that lives in hair for days nor the smoke of hickory chips coloring venison or dancing off leaf piles in backyards nor Marlboros basking in a Jeep?s interior or the cough you swallow deeply from a lit joint real smoke is heavy yet rises in seizures you can?t see because you?re in it it starts to lean its massive head as light breaks over trees with a slight wind it fattens, gobbling what?s beneath by the ton the portrait of a scream, black bear embalmed alive, grotesque face carved again each moment wincing & eating itself that you see on your walk to the train this is not real smoke, smells too much of burnt humidifiers, bottled cleaner, old tarps, paint cans real smoke smells of real bodies you can?t remember it speaks in shade, a list of names phantom, black orchid, room of empty shoes it punctuates history books & museums in photographs, whole populations ablaze who found real smoke doesn?t take our loved ones, it becomes them 18 Mother in Backyard Where once hung a swing in pointillist June, truck wheel slung from oak bow, poison veins all wrapped around trunk, this fable made: boy climbs highest branch, bark makes throne, decrees feather storm in a field across the street. Still worth it then to taste the giant world, lull it under the tongue. Distant rumble of dirt bike in a bed for creeks wakes the sleeping water. But boy caught in tent cocoon can?t help until someone paints him wings, floats him over quilted hills, squares of crops, needle-point crosses. From up high he could cancel clouds, count strawberries, carrot stems, sage for that night?s soup. Could escape ears of long dead pressed to roots beneath the lawn, out of view, wanting a drink. First fat drops. He lands on tiptoes, slinks onto porch. Smell of dog?s musk in new puddles, thick heat. The garden in pungent colors, fence posts holding chicken wire & vines around her rump as she bends to meet soil in rain, humming softly, digging. 19 Suzanne We?ll call her that, as in the song we?ve heard tonight ring off the amphitheater?s curved awning. Look for her feet bare beside lanes of highway, facing concert traffic from a gurney edge? toes that sing trust in parking area grass stuck with midnight?s condensation; see, her sandals have fled somewhere across glass-dewed pavement. The road is a cake for Suzanne we eat one yard at a time, red line of candles passing slowly enough to count. & orange light like honey drunk from trucks packed with equipment & more light, but not Suzanne. She shows you where to look? at the garbage of her body, at the vase of her body trying to keep its dark flowers. There are heroes in the seaweed, & there are bombs in heaven. There is a black four door against the rutted divider. Yes, there is a body, Suzanne, but we can only see its feet. There is no perfect touch, we know. The steering wheel shudders in the backseat. The dashboard is a river we can cross. 20 In a Valley ?The restraining bend produces a ?flower structure? which is a series of vertical faults of compressional duplexes that are subparallel to the parent fault.? ?Terry Engelder The Geometry of Strike-Slip Faulting It hits somewhat like an orogeny, an uplift, overthrust the strata of the brain, a familiar pressure. The basement plate, core self, is compacted from all sides causing a fold. The center plunges, raising margins, split along faults, up ramps, to distant peaks. It?s not your fault. You are a sheet of medial sediment, compressed. Everywhere, the surface keeps rupturing in escarpment streaks, corrugated like corduroy. You sit, bending quietly on the school bus each morning, tucked in a hooded jacket, 21 in the updraft of voices rising with each stop. Fields & homes & trees elongate in lateral lines, accelerating the trend. Like your father, sitting with a cigarette in his green plastic chair in the back yard. 22 Puffballs Spores like tiny birthday balloons swarm our chests in first cold of the year. Wet bark chips by the dogwood just sprouted clumps of big toes we pluck & pitch at one another, watch for green explosions. The orchard of the world just sprung its crystal fruit of new breasts. We?ll take any object we can fondle behind our backs? horse chestnut, green walnut, anything dredged heavy from a creek. Just before supper, rhododendron shivers behind the rim where I practice long jump shots alone. There arrives a thing in the leaves, crouched in darkness, waiting. Possibly a bear this time of year, when hunger happens. They?re known to spill in rolling musk through neighborhoods on garbage night. You?ll read next day?s paper: Bear Found Sleeping in Doorway, Bear Climbs Tree Behind Bank. This bear who knows what suffers to feed it: how sharply thorns want their berries, how rainbow trout will bolt from a bulky shadow, how a cat claws the nose unless one bites down hard? 23 the branches shake again, now fiercely. I let the ball bounce & freeze until the sensor scanning from the garage loses me. I move an arm to see again, just as the boy whose laugh soon puckers steps out. He takes an ugly shot, both hands above his head in a kind of chuck. Out spotting windows for some curved figure to appear towel-less, reeking of soap, dripping as colors on eyelids before sleep, brightest shapes that stay when light goes out. Early autumn dark, some parents are too drunk. 24 Scenes from Church Camp I. ABOUT LEAVING, I REMEMBER ?cashing all my tickets, all the Nerds, Rolos, Warheads I could pocket from the camp store, then being chased by a wasp, then, one boy wanting to throw a Frisbee just as my parents arrived, so they were impressed I?d made friends I hadn?t? probably a picture of us somewhere. I remember a man from the special needs bunk screaming in a bathroom of the main hall, door open, as a donkey does when threatened, cracking, desperate voice, as counselors tried to pull his pants up. All parents had to sign their children out at the main desk, & so we carried my bag through the choir of families just meeting, with boys & girls leaning to leave like a coffee hour after extended service. I don?t remember seeing the girls there who rubbed themselves with poison ivy, which didn?t grow on their city block, to see what happens; nor, as we walked passing the lake, any giant snapper come popping up to wave from shore. Leaving is always so distinct: the bodies out in orange paddleboats for one more trip could be your body, the empty park grills & picnic benches could welcome you with dinner, the trail running up a grassy hill to bunks could lead you off to sleep. What you leave, always, are possibilities, no matter how much you wished for home all week with the certainty you?d stay, unless you foraged & ate some poison. 25 II. WHEN YOU BREAK OPEN A FIREFLY ?the baked light gets on your hands, your jeans, the corners of your mouth you rub, stuck with ice cream. Here?s where it ends?the deer trail leading to the fort you?ve built at the back edge of the field, where you pee on budding forsythia, where dusk finds you in dirty socks, & your counselor lights mortars he bought in PA. At home, village cops would trace the smoke, come & ticket your neighbors. If you let your prisoners go, twitching little lights in a jar, it?s clear: they?d spark the air all at once, draw attention to your hideout. Now is for fingers pinching whatever glows in such small bodies, light you can only spread thin on leaves, can?t put out in time before they come picking through the bushes for their ball. 26 III. THE GIRLS? BUNK Most nights that week, after lights out, I?d hear the thump thump of feet drumming ground, as if the sky had finally arrived, landing in successive bits behind the south cabins. Older boys? bodies fell the eight feet just fine, each frame that bent to fit through half-windows in moonlight could?ve landed from the roof, from the treetops, it seemed, to take off towards some sweet image, pursue the faintest odor, manically stalk & bound through brush, chest-high, shin-deep, thick as shit? slick with sweat, I?d rise to watch from my window their bodies run in pale light safely with the promise they?d teased into me, not to tell?asking what parts I?d seen, how my mother was shaped; at night they each sprang towards a damp hope, keeping them awake, & me too tied to Earth until, finally, quiet. 27 IV. SWIMMING LESSONS Shallow ponds were fine, but in most lakes there were: snapping turtles big as sandboxes, spirits of the drowned with long arms that could pull you in, & sharks who swam up rivers & were caught forever, hungry, one assumed. Just me who had to stay & practice mornings with a counselor while the others trekked to tie-dye T-shirts or learn to roll out pizza dough. Dipping under was not a thing of skill, as she demonstrated, of knowing how to hold breath deeply, squeeze the nose if necessary. I?d swum since I was small at the local high school Saturday nights, had mastered can openers & atomic bombs, had dived until my ears hurt, racing to touch bottom. The lake was different, it had no bottom, at least that I could see. It wasn?t like praying: I couldn?t just close my eyes & sink as at dinner to my father?s voice, thankful for macaroni. Or Sundays, as the congregation parroted our minister so loudly their voices happened in my head. Easy during worship to drop a bible or kick your sister, no one would hear. Or to mess the words? our Father who farts in Heaven?though one should probably apologize, kneeling before bed. Under water in that lake, there was no sound at all. 28 V. WAKING UP That night, my turn to sleep out back with a friend I got to choose in a covered wagon replica, set with frames & mattresses that they forgot to screen. Mosquitoes found us easily, so we were forced to shrink into our sleeping bags, though it was hot, July. So many firsts. As I was led out with my bedding just at dark, flashlights of female counselors appeared atop the hill; they?d detoured on their way back from the bathrooms, assisting a man older than them who mostly squeaked & moaned. I shook his hand at their request, learned his name, face, mostly in darkness. Never touched someone like that before, could only think of his contagion. But it was good to sleep out there, away from the group of older boys who labeled me terms I?d never heard: faggot, homo, queer. I spent that week alone or with a boy my age, also from upstate. We went everywhere together?it was him I chose to pioneer with me that night, not helping my case at all. From my wagon bed, late, the yelling started. I could see from the open canvas flap two counselors back from some rendezvous, acting a little like that man I?d met: unsteady, one kicking at the other?s door, shouting fffock, not pronouncing it quite right. My parents never drank too much, did scold me sometimes, never badly. I woke that night feeling like I must have broken something. 29 VI. PILLOW FIGHT It is too hot where the windows swelled all day & so, just this once, we can sleep under sky. There are blankets instead of grass. There is an old elm in the distance watching in new horror. Everyone get it out now so we can all go to sleep. Five minutes to tell an old story of anger: the whistle sounds. First boy crests another atop the skull, spins him, but the boy hits back from under the attic stairwell, from beyond the bluff overlooking town, from his bed, wherever he is, he hits back. Go, flail until we say stop. Five minutes to get it out. Soon an antique silence in their walloped ears, scalps glow with nuclear heat. They hit hard here, slip flashlights into pillowcases, so the boy must hit harder. Their shadows, if they had, would curse them out, ashamed. Don?t let your cheekbones stop you. Only a minute left. Stand & let your shoulders take the weight. 30 VII. BACK IN THE WOODS There was sky between me & those fish, so I couldn?t see them that far out. Clouds crouched on the water, sky blue heavy on that hidden pond like a fat skin: so much weight, miles of vapor resting on rocks, mud, my head, such light. Near shore, sunnies looked up & pondered what I was?dark form bending through reeds for frogs & newts, scooping them up, raising them to heaven. The kind of heaven you dream about & wish you?d never slept. My friend loaned me his pole, with an old brown lure tied snug by his dad, three big hooks. It wasn?t enough to cast rubber, I realized. Nor to stomp the mud & grass, break twigs from my way, swing a switch at the thicket to clear a path. Not enough to single out the amphibious population to be gored & flung to the shallow middle of tomorrow, as I?d watched the older boys do at the lake?reeled back by the bottom lip, cheek or neck until limp, when the smallmouths would lose interest. Never enough. The little crowd of slimy carcasses I?d gathered trying for the bass I so wanted to outmatch, who turned their heads in sheer urbanity & sank down to mourn in the cool depths. Then I swung too high & caught a tree, left a frog hanging, new point in a constellation of green, had to stop, break my line & head back. Almost lunch. Counselors would be counting heads. New idea: how to fish for squirrels. Old idea: how to wrench the very angels from their lofts, strip their tenderloins, eat them fried or just broiled with a little salad, some fruit. 31 VIII. LEAVING FOREVER Still you looked around at roads, hills, buildings you knew, the chapel where you all filed each night after supper, realized you wouldn?t see it again, no matter how your parents tried persuading, & pictured yourself wading in the lake mornings after loons had disappeared, mist sifted off, smell of trees in sun. That ride home you wouldn?t cry, but would at least complain until your mother turned around, apologized for everything, said they wouldn?t make you go again next year. Truth is, leaving, you still felt such possibility fat in leaves swelled with light & memory. That was enough, then, & still now all you could expect. An apology & a promise. 32 As if the Burglar Actually ?without stepping on the crocuses closed for night, tiptoes over garden bricks set diagonally like saw teeth, over rabbits panting after burying their love. As if his tall figure actually jars an old latch on that double-paned window set in the cellar?s wall & slits the perimeter where paint?s sealed the crack. As if he climbs in unassailed by growl or bark & only the basement stair?s 3rd rung gives a shriek. This night, more moans from mortar foundation. Every crawling thing behind the walls is talking. The family, like always, has slipped under their pulp yawned their tired mandibles, closed their wings. & the boy, full of oak & thoughts of old growth, like always, lies flat in his room & watches the face peel in paint above his head, refracted headlights mime symbols on his dresser. Hearing that fatal hallway creak, as if his end were really here, he drifts off, again, as if forever. 33 III 34 Dusk We won?t give up bouncing like pets in the back yard, a box with its lid removed, pines on three sides & the brick house. A single window shines from above. Getting hard to make out faces. Shapes in the garden lining the house, lining the stone retaining wall? rhubarb legs, the holly bear?s belly, high fronds of ornamental grass like a crowd of heads, & the sound of insects cutting holes. Across a dim landscape of clouds, bats swoop at a football, a Frisbee, a sneaker, all tossed straight up. They?re hunting what?s bigger than them. Light?s gone, just the sound of feet. As if the afternoon has been turned off. 35 Beach Walk Late with Baby Dolphins & Boats after Whistler?s Nocturne: Blue & Silver?Bognor Ocean has a volume & a lip to crinkle against shore. World?s many tones slashed by triangular sails. No streaks of light, strips or lines. No light that funnels into or out of the far city he forgot to paint. The only yellow dots the boats, & some white specks night sky, a painting of light?s edges the city down coast sucks in. No stars in the ocean, even, just a dark film & two figures, still, not leaping. There we are. We saw the small bodies arc up all day in sync, threading waves, chasing each other, diving when tour boats crashed through. Day was feverish, jellies kept us from wading above our knees, novels led us down long plotlines in sand. But now it?s night, cool enough for sleeves, seems all children are asleep, though we know better? 36 behind us, bright spinning rides, fair music. Whistler forgot our boardwalk, or maybe he thinks it?s later, after everything?s shut down. Maybe dawn?s about to break the layers of shade into color. Then why are we here, to watch for dolphins so late? To hook a bluefish from the just-blue seascape? The ships creak away down coast, their sails of some light biting even lighter sky. Our bodies are dark clouds, beached in the grainy air sand keeps, clouds like ships pulling a heavy hook. All children are asleep. We wade the shore, muck of land?s flesh, darkest blue pulling away from where light laps on our gums. Should he let us go? 37 Hosta Bed & Sprinkler Trickle step from leaf to brawny leaf on down to mulch rich with roasted leaves like coffee ground to soil, down into the choked patchwork of tubes like straws that stretch from every leaf-bearing being to suck up water, steam it back out through broad faces you can smell on a warm spring day, can stand in waft of on your walk to the store to buy milk & croissants, other necessaries. Hostas beneath the elm all tipped toward the sun & breathing, some a solid green, some with moving spots of light the tree above affords. There are no deer in the city to creep through in evening & blight these broad leaves back to stalks. There are no voles to squirm around the buried jungle gym of roots & chew a stream through each plant?s belly. Soil ends two feet down on an older sidewalk. A stone-cement exoskeleton girds the garden?s waist to give its fruit lift & poise as you pass regarding the healthy colors, striations of white & yellow over green. Hostas seem happy here, such shade, water, admiration, all they need. No matter the air tastes like hot pavement, each stalk still leans its harness of purple bells for whatever happens by, each day this week more in bloom. 38 Home for the Weekend South down 94 towards New Jersey, past the jockey hollow & looping white fences where, by mid-morning, horses will canter in circles; past the garden center, where even from the car you spot colors: Koi wait by pond?s edges to flash at scattered pellets when children come; right on West street, left on Sandfordville, a shortcut you learned delivering deli subs one summer, right down Covered Bridge, left on Blooms Corners; past the dairy, still open weekends with its outdoor brick oven, wheels of cheese stacked, one black bull? you smell mud, wet hide, meadow flowers, bread baking; two more miles, same road, past woods still undeveloped, houses whose owners have fought for years in Village Hall, in local papers, to keep the land bucolic; then left on Prices Switch just past a fawn crushed in the grassy triangle for yield signs, that time of year, where this road splits into the bent elbow of another; right again onto 94, past the display of oaken bears near roadside, chain-sawed by the man you parked & watched one afternoon tiptoe with motor growling above his head, etching the body of what might have been a person until his saw turned delicately into its blank face & the snout clearly protruded, smiling a bit, but like an animal. No show this morning, but the bears stand the same, on hind legs, paws raised as if about to shove. On for miles. Old farm houses peer out from just before the rising ridge line, this stretch of valley always noisy in summer when corn mutters, tractors chug, road crews hammer. Still quiet in April, only crows talk from telephone wires, a few cars pass. 39 Mostly the valley yawns the whole ride there, like you remember it, save for a few new gaudy tracts of housing. Finally, left just past the first major light after the Hess station, into the dewy asphalt lot of Saxony Bakery, from which your father would return early some Saturdays with a white box, unannounced, before you even stretched your neck, sat up in bed?same order, always, two powdered crawlers, two crumb cakes, two fruit Danishes, two Boston cream, enough for two mornings of cartoons washed down with 2%. & now your turn at surprise, gone first thing to have the car looked at, really to fill an old order, find your way by memory. But what you find are parking lines faded, grass spraying from asphalt, windows empty. Nothing left but to drive home hungry, turn down the first interesting street, Sand Hill or Maple Grange, & follow it, open windows eating the hum, reek, bouquet of spring just as on the drive there, not less or more vibrant, pungent, harmonic, nothing really new. Lawn mowers will be out soon, when last night?s shower dries off. Water will rise with the scent of what it left? grass, pavement, detergent?but will always return to earth in some form. You?ll find your way, or you won?t. 40 Adirondack Anaconda You can try to ignore it, the thick rope sliding through leaves & acorns at the backs of your feet. Up Panther Mountain, which hosts no real panthers & qualifies as a long hill. In afternoon shade, composure of trees, sound amplifies, & your car parked an hour back. Unlike small animals, we?re not so equipped to be hunted: a rabbit can jab left, then right until its brown back finds cover. Though first it will freeze at hawk?s cry. Best not to pause. The noise will only start again when you move. Moreover, who keeps still when the threat is only sound? This deep in any woods, you can feel you?re nowhere, like you could be mauled, stung, crushed, & who would know? Like you could be strangled, not by a snake. Easy to stop, let that nothing find you here. Instead, lift the feet a bit higher. Keep moving. 41 The Poet Dreams of His Father ?whose hair is black as a river & messed as if by wind; whose body has all its quirks: the emptied top gums, the hatchet bite at one thumb?s base, but is not the body; who stands & looks from gravel & docks at the Hudson wrestling itself, but not at our 24-footer hitched to the truck, mast fastened with blue rope. He?s been sitting again, for how long, the way he does, watching the ground, bottles, batteries, & lighters washed around his feet. I find myself here, at times, hands between knees, elbows to thighs, leaned until the head is parallel with ankles, watching nothing change. At times, I find myself here watching my father. In a moment, he may see me & turn away from that river, explain how some old sloop out 50 yards is tacking into wind. We?ve come here, finally, so he?ll teach me the proper knots, when to let out sails, port from starboard. He turns as if to ask for help. 42 But this is my dream, I ask instead. No matter, same question either way: how to make it out? Despite the canvas clouds & the cold everywhere, he begins in a voice deep & low as ever that is not his voice, so far as I can tell.