I
JUST VISITING
We are the world that wonât let them weep.
âRichard Hugo
CROWS
Oil struck in Iowa,
your wet black skims these fields.
Dot on a fencepost i,
then eight upbeats to a scale on wind,
the check in a kidâs crayon
at two hundred feet.
Bow tie for a cornfield suit,
the groom on strung wire, any sky beside you
makes a lovely bride.
Youâre the best news on the wire,
you stare down manâs worst weather,
youâre the pupil
in Godâs one good eye.
NORTON
Heâs a little slow. Parts of him never got
done. He came late to his own litter, barely made
the doggie God cut. One third lab, one third retriever,
one-third slow. His color canât make up
its mind. Wherever it is black and brown meet
to say howdy, that place is Norton. One front leg goes
its own way but hardly knows where. A cowlick runs
the back of his neck, ridgeline fur that defies
hand or brush. It says, âItâs me. Itâs Norton.â
Norton can camp out in his own skin.
Heâd go out in a storm, never know to come in. Youâd find
him frozen, a stiffened tail or an ear flapping
out of the drift, a kind of handle Norton would leave
you. Or heâd swim after ducks until he was spent, go down
for the last time, that Durwood Kirby look on his face.
Heâs a little slow. But heâs got the part right,
he does the part fine. Friend, if your grin goes bad,
if love wonât keep you company, if your whole goddamn life
comes down on top of you, Nortonâs fault it could
never, ever be.
YMCA
They made us swim naked at the YMCA. We were six or seven years old or so, dozens of us huddled along the ceramic shore, a cluster of behinds. The water was more green than blue and a haze gathered above us, a primordial mist that trapped itself beneath the ceiling canopy. They would teach us to swim, make us into little four-oared boats with peckers for rudders. But some sea in us already knew who we were and we took to water like lemmings, bumping again and again into each other, so many limbs flapping about in that little pool.
We tried to drown the weak. We squashed Leslie Morgan against the side of the pool until he hollered Uncle. We dragged Fats Logan to the murky depths and held him there, stuck rubber rings into his crack. We climbed on top of each other and fought two against two until the death or until our nuts were crushed against the necks of our partners. We crawled amphibious back to shore, slid along the slippery tile on our behinds, waving our arms and chanting the chant primeval. We stood in the warm shallows and smiled, little yellow clouds rising beside us.
âI donât understand,â our mothers would say, âwhy they donât make them wear suits.â
We knew things. We knew things our mothers might never know and those things made us stronger. Jimmie Geralk had a birthmark on his ass, the state of Louisiana. Justin Rail had no testicles as far as we could see. On the diving board Dutchie OâDellâs pecker had a hook on the end. Tommie Andersonâs hid beneath a jacket of skin. And when we straddled the rope that strung the bobbing buoys between the deep and shallow ends, riding it cowboy, one hand waving the wetgreen air, a sensation crept through our groins, half pain and half pleasure, a kind of sex.
RE-RUNS
And the animals in questionâfour pink-eared, black-and-white laboratory ratsâ
appeared to be dreaming about something very specific: the maze they were learning to run.
Ah, the young Neapolitans, pink and pet furry,
tails up and theyâre mobiles for a nursery.
When old Aunt Lizzie kept
her cold course, we veered left.
Traveling companions,
a million-year nap and we both awoke mammalian,
womby warm and breasty,
or dragging a sacful of testes.
How we scavenged, shared the same diet.
Blood and marrow, gristle and grain. Cheese or chocolate?
We canât get enough of each other. We eat
and breathe and sleep together.
Itâs the dream milk, cloudy with scene and circumstance.
Now day in review, the second chance.
Tomorrow the old routine, the mazes again.
Dry those red tears, old friends.
Sweet dreams, little sleepmates, and all the right turnsâ
tonight weâll run the learning curve.
INDUSTRY, IOWA
Roll your windows up. When the Old Fort Road
bends south to pick up Vincent, take the dust west
until the wires quit. Look for a break in the corn.
Thatâs Industry.
Wear something worn. Tar never stole gravel
from these chickens. For a dime in â17 a pig or boy
could ride the Northern to Fort Dodge. Bad times
donât stretch pork or steel much. Now
itâs weather and Sundays come here.
Windâs the oldest citizen, the elevator raises
pigeons, th...