The Truro Bear and Other Adventures (4 page)

Somewhere down beach, in the morning, at water’s edge, I found
    a sea turtle,
its huge head a smoldering apricot, its shell streaming with sea-
    weed,
its eyes closed, its flippers motionless.
When I bent down, it moved a little.
When I picked it up, it sighed.
Was it forty pounds, or fifty pounds, or a hundred?
Was it two miles back to the car?
We walked a little while, and then we rested, and then we walked on
I walked with my mouth open, my heart roared.
The eyes opened, I don’t know what they thought.
Sometimes the flippers swam at the air.
Sometimes the eyes closed.
I couldn’t walk anymore, and then I walked some more
while it turned into granite, or cement, but with that apricot-
    colored head,
that stillness, that Buddha-like patience, that cold-shocked
but slowly beating heart.
Finally, we reached the car.

The afternoon is the other part of this story.
Have you ever found something beautiful, and maybe just in
    time?
How such a challenge can fill you!
Jesus could walk over the water.
I had to walk ankle-deep in the sand, and I did it.
My bones didn’t quite snap.

Come on in, and see me smile.
I probably won’t stop for hours.
Already, in the warmth, the turtle has raised its head, is looking
    around.
Today, who could deny it, I am an important person.

I’ll tell you a half-dozen things
that happened to me
in Indiana
when I went that far west to teach.
You tell me if it was worth it.

I lived in the country
with my dog—
part of the bargain of coming.
And there was a pond
with fish from, I think, China.
I felt them sometimes against my feet.
Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges,
to eat the grass.
I’m not lying.
And I saw coyotes,
two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly
unenclosed fields.
And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped
into the road just—oh, I mean just, in front of my car—
and we both made it home safe.
And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses,
or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house,
and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth,
he, too, would have hooves trimmed
for the Indiana winter,
and apples did it,
and a rope over the neck did it,
so I won something wonderful;
and there was, one morning,
an owl
flying, oh pale angel, into
the hay loft of a barn,
I see it still;
and there was once, oh wonderful,
a new horse in the pasture,
a tall, slim being—a neighbor was keeping him there—
and she put her face against my face,
put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets,
against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me,
to see who I was,
a long quiet minute—minutes—
then she stamped feet and whisked tail
and danced deliciously into the grass away, and came back.
She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough.
Such a fine time I had teaching in Indiana.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

A mink,
    jointless as heat, was
tip-toeing along
    the edge of the creek,

which was still in its coat of snow,
    yet singing—I could hear it!—
the old song
    of brightness.

It was one of those places,
    turning and twisty,
that Ruskin might have painted, though
    he didn’t. And there were trees
leaning this way and that,
    seed-beaded

buckthorn mostly, but at the moment
    no bird, the only voice
that of the covered water—like a long,
    unknotted thread, it kept
slipping through. The mink
    had a hunger in him

bigger than his shadow, which was gathered
    like a sheet of darkness under his
neat feet which were busy
    making dents in the snow. He sniffed
slowly and thoroughly in all
    four directions, as though

it was a prayer to the whole world, as far
    as he could capture its beautiful
smells—the iron of the air, the blood
    of necessity. Maybe, for him, even
the pink sun fading away to the edge
    of the world had a smell,

of roses, or of terror, who knows
    what his keen nose was
finding out. For me, it was the gift of the winter
    to see him. Once, like a hot, dark-brown pillar,
he stood up — and then he ran forward, and was gone.
    I stood awhile and then walked on

over the white snow: the terrible, gleaming
    loneliness. It took me, I suppose,
something like six more weeks to reach
    finally a patch of green, I paused so often
to be glad, and grateful, and even then carefully across
    the vast, deep woods I kept looking back.

Our new dog, named for the beloved poet,
ate a book which unfortunately we had
    left unguarded.
Fortunately it was the
Bhagavad Gita,
of which many copies are available.
Every day now, as Percy grows
into the beauty of his life, we touch
his wild, curly head and say,

“Oh, wisest of little dogs.”

I have a little dog who likes to nap with me.
He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck.
He is sweeter than soap.
He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace,
    which can’t even bark.
I would like to take him to Kashmir and the Ukraine,
    and Jerusalem and Palestine and Iraq and Darfur,
that the sorrowing thousands might see his laughing mouth.
I would like to take him to Washington, right into
    the oval office
where Donald Rumsfeld would crawl out of the president’s
    armpit
and kneel down on the carpet, and romp like a boy.

For once, for a moment, a rational man.

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I’m awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws
    in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.

Tell me you love me, he says.

Tell me again.

Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.

I went to church.
I walked on the beach
and played with Percy.

I answered the phone
and paid the bills.
I did the laundry.

I spoke her name
a hundred times.

I knelt in the dark
and said some holy words.

I went downstairs,
I watered the flowers,
I fed Percy.

In the morning of his days he is in the afternoon of his life.
It’s some news about kidneys, those bean-shaped necessities,
    of which, of his given two, he has one working, and
        that not well.

We named him for the poet, who died young, in the blue
    waters off Italy.
Maybe we should have named him William, since Wordsworth
    almost never died.

We must laugh a little at this rich and unequal world,
    so they say, so they say.
And let them keep saying it.

Percy and I are going out now, to the beach, to join
    his friends—
the afghan, the lab, the beautiful basset.
And let me go with good cheer in his company.
For though he is young he is beloved,
    he is all but famous as he runs
across the shining beach, that faces the sea.

You’re like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school.
Sit, I say, and you jump up.
Come, I say, and you go galloping down the sand
to the nearest dead fish
with which you perfume your sweet neck.
It is summer.
How many summers does a little dog have?

Run, run, Percy.
This is our school.

And now Percy is getting brazen.
Let’s down the beach, baby, he says.
Let’s shake it with a little barking.
Let’s find dead things, and explore them,
by mouth, if possible.

Or maybe the leavings of Paul’s horse (after which,
forgive me for mentioning it, he is fond of kissing).

Ah, this is the thing that comes to each of us.
The child grows up.
And, according to our own ideas, is practically asunder.

I understand it.
I struggle to celebrate.
I say, with a stiff upper lip familiar to many:

Just look at that curly-haired child now, he’s his own man.

Percy does not like it when I read a book.
He puts his face over the top of it and moans.
He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.
The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.
The tide is out and the neighbor’s dogs are playing.
But Percy, I say. Ideas! The elegance of language!
The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories
that rise and fall and turn into strength, or courage.

Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough.
Let’s go.

Your friend is coming I say
to Percy, and name a name

and he runs to the door, his
wide mouth in its laugh-shape,

and waves, since he has one, his tail.
Emerson, I am trying to live,

as you said we must, the examined life.
But there are days I wish

there was less in my head to examine,
not to speak of the busy heart. How

would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not
thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

Today Jill is cutting my snags and my curls.
My legs grow longer.
My tail gets brushed.
Then, the bath.

Mary has been reading a book about
a woman who made a secret journey
to Lhasa. She reads aloud to me the parts
about the village dogs, who are big and
fearless and full of bark. And, all
their lives, dirty. I am filled
with envy.

Then it’s over and I am in my bed
as white as snow and soft and all
the sea salt gone. And over every part of me
an absurd but lovely fragrance.

Percy says, I’ve eaten and I’m still hungry.
So I say, what about toast? and offer him
    a dry corner.
Percy says, I like butter better.

Eggs then? I say. And we share a couple scrambled.

Good! says Percy. And then because he’s polite sometimes,
    Thank you.

He turns to leave the room, then looks back
philosophically. I guess people just don’t understand,
he says, how it is never to be not hungry.

First of all, I do not want to be doing this.
Second of all, Percy does not want me
    to be doing this,
hanging over my desk like a besieged person
    with a dull pencil and innumerable lists
        of numbers.

Outside the water is blue, the sky is clear,
    the tide rising.
Percy, I say, this has to be done. This is
    essential. I’ll be finished eventually.

Keep me in your thoughts, he replies. Just because
    I can’t count to ten doesn’t mean
I don’t remember yesterday, or anticipate today.
    I give you one more hour, then we step out
into the beautiful, money-deaf gift of the world
    and run.