We drive through Sorrento Valley,
Patrick and I, talking politics & war,
the idiocy of Iraq, Afghanistan,
as if we learned nothing from Vietnam.
A fog bank rolls in: from a distance,
a mountain range, peaks solid
as the Cuyamacas; up close,
it loses solidity, pours over ridges
at Torrey Pines like an invading
army—engulfs branches, flows into
canyons in swirls of ghostly light.
In its presence the day kneels,
summer acquiescing. How fierce
the sun was, battling across the sky
in its chariot of flames, blinding
in its certainty, now hidden, slipping
away. The day darkens. Oleanders
retreat in mist. How odd that mere dust
and water can trigger such confusion.
The world has become thin.
This poem is empty,
offers less than a new moon.
It smells of nothing
and tastes of air,
but no wind moves through this poem.
You will not hear this poem
as it leaves the room,
and if it touches you
the sensation will be of
a memory you have forgotten
you have forgotten.
You dream this poem every night.
It will change your life.
This afternoon, sitting upstairs,
reading Merwin’s The Vixen,
I noticed in the sunlight
through my window
a million motes of dust
in the air—but of course
they’ve always been there,
dancing invisibly day and night,
particles swaying in a perpetual
Brownian waltz that I saw only
now, in a slant of sunlight.
So I sat for a while, watching,
and nothing else mattered
during those sacred moments
on this small pebble of a day.
Sometimes, watching a movie or leaving my apartment
or rinsing shampoo from my hair, that feeling comes over me
again and I have to stop, pause the DVD or just stand
in the doorway or allow water to stream over my head
and face, eyes closed—and I feel as if I were full of tiny
silver threads swirling in circles, flashing in and out
of light as they spin, and that’s all there is: thousands
of tiny silver threads, turning and turning, and I feel
both empty and overflowing, hollow as a city at 3:00 a.m.,
all its fervid life squirming in anticipatory dreams, and I wait
for that bright tinsel light to come streaming from my pores,
skin stretched and aching, and I want to touch and be touched
again—but the moment passes and I restart the film, walk
to my car, finish the shower, and the world, with astonishing
indifference, spins on.
Even sitting up hurts, stomach muscles weak
as old rubber bands from the coughing, so
intense at times I almost black out, throat raw
from attempts to empty mucus-filled lungs.
Over-the-counter drugs do nothing. I sleep
in snatches, an hour, two, pulled from dreams
by my body’s attempts to find air, exhausted.
Should see a doctor, I know, but no health care,
part-time work, day job lost to this recession
that edges toward depression. Drove to Von’s
this morning, refrigerator empty—not even
bottled water—tap tasting odd and bitter
as always. Dragged sacks of meat, eggs,
bread, water home, body coated in light sweat.
I lie down. My shoulders ache, and I think of
those summer evenings in El Cajon, ex-wife
massaging my neck, her voice in my ear: you’re
so tight—relax, relax, fingers probing into flesh,
daylight fading into dim purple twilight, her body
next to mine, faint odor of sweat mixed with
the scent that was hers alone—then another
coughing fit jerks me almost sideways, and
I spit up a wad of mucus, consider the bathroom
sink, a dozen feet away—but it’s all too much,
and I lie back on my empty bed and swallow.