All of Us (33 page)

                         “and we kept going

                         up and up and up

                         and your brother

                         had a headache

                         from the al-titude

                         and we kept going

                         up and up and he said,

                         ‘where we going, dad?’

                         and I said, up.”

just pleasant to sit here

this morning drinking fresh coffee

wearing a clean shirt. taking stock?

what does that mean? mum dead,

dad has sclerosis. sclerosis,

a hell of a word. what is tomorrow?

tuesday? ha. my wife wants

to bake me a cake. she says. most

of my birthdays I’ve had to work.

that means. birthdays? I remember

                         the road into jameson lake:

                         hardpan, switchback, dogwood

                         scraping the fenders and trailing

                         along the canvas top of the jeep

                         until, past timberline, we left

                         the woods and road behind

                         and nothing ahead but steep ridges

                         sided with wildflowers and bunchgrass,

                         then over the highest ridge

                         into jameson valley,

                         and the lake still frozen.

that was a giggle. ice fishing

in july. high country, indeed.

George Mensch’s cattle

have dunged-up the living room,

windows have fallen out

and the back porch

has caved in around the kitchen:

I move through each filthy room

like a finance company.

As I stare at the smoothly worn portrait of

The Sphinx, surrounded by a strange fading landscape,

I recall the remoteness of my own hands pulling

Themselves awake this morning, shaky, ready to begin

Their terrible round of questioning.

The latin winds of Majorca

are far away still. Here,

machineguns traverse each night. By day,

high-explosives, barbed wire,
snipers…

Rats work their way in and out

of the fallen. The corpses are like lorries,

the rats drive them deeper

into the mud. Behind the lines,

on both sides, officers and men queue

for a last fuck. All but Graves, anyhow.

First the hawk must grow in a man, a spur

to sex. We live

in difficult times.

There was always the inside and

the outside. Inside, my wife,

my son and daughters, rivers

of conversation, books, gentleness

and affection.

But then one night outside

my bedroom window someone —

something, breathes, shuffles.

I rouse my wife and terrified

I shudder in her arms till morning.

That space outside my bedroom

window! The few flowers that grow

there trampled down, the Camel

cigarette butts underfoot —

I am not imagining things.

The next night and the next

it happens, and I rouse my wife

and again she comforts me and

again she rubs my legs tense

with fright and takes me in her embrace.

But then I begin to demand more

and more of my wife. In shame she

parades up and down the bedroom floor,

I driving her like a loaded wheel-

barrow, the carter and the cart.

Finally, tonight, I touch my wife lightly

and she springs awake anxious

and ready. Lights on, nude, we sit

at the vanity table and stare frantically

into the glass. Behind us, two lips,

the reflection of a glowing cigarette.