THE SCARF
It was a beauty, made by the Hmong in Laos
over a century ago, this gift from a terrible boyfriend
who promptly ghosted me for another poet.
You could drape that thing over your nakedness
and nobody would blink—the scarf was all they’d see.
Describe it? A fool’s errand, and I’m over being a fool.
He was history, but I wore the scarf for years.
Then came a letter asking for it back, since it held
such strong meanings for him. Something about
the recent death of his mother, how he’d intended
the scarf as a gift for her. I never replied.
Truth was, the scarf, plus my winter coat,
had already been lifted from an airport bench
as I waited for my bag to tremble down the chute.
“Gypsies,” said the bored security guard, quote-unquote.
I missed that scarf, which I’d loaned to friends
for their own occasions, even a TV interview. May it
ride better shoulders than those of the the Idiot Prince,
now a self-annointed Dharma King, who couldn’t
even tell one girlfriend he’d moved on to the next.
And why even care really, after so many decades?
We both have grown children. It’s a different century.
But I never forget unanswered letters. Still want
to say something about karma to Mr. Dharma.
May he be reincarnated as a hat-rack.
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
There’s a very good short essay on distraction.
But where did I read it?
I spoke these words aloud, but only knew
it when my spouse (who I didn’t know
was there) nearly collapsed laughing.
From the doorway, he added, If you’re looking
for your coffee, it’s on the hall table.
So many open windows on this screen.
Someone posts, is anybody else upset
about the price of frozen cakes at Safeway?
I’m selecting poems for Tuesday night’s class,
when a new Visa bill pings my inbox.
Paying it off might restore some clarity
to my current state of mind. Or just more debt.
Not to be confused with depth.
The lesson will be on the use of distraction
or digression as a kind of poetic structure,
an animating force, since isn’t that how
our minds move? I mean, after Frank O’Hara
reads the news headline about Lana Turner’s
collapse, he goes on forever about the weather,
argues with the spectral friend he is running late
to meet over the exact form of precipitation
falling at that moment—he insists it’s hail, knows
his friend would call it rain. Or snow. I mean,
if we curb our wandering attentions, what’s left
of what C.K. Williams called the theater of our thinking?
I could be searching prognoses
for a dear friend with a terrible diagnosis,
but what I find will likely make me upset
this tall glass of water, soaking any hand-outs
printed so far. Actually, that part already
happened earlier today.
What a mess.
I mean,
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
HORSE IN WINTER
She would be fifty-six. Since it’s winter now
where we lived then, her chestnut coat’s thick.
Last night I dreamed an arsonist torched
the barn—everything burnt to a powder.
Where we lived, her coat grew thick.
The past keeps crowding out the present.
Her barn—everything burnt to a powder.
I hem her stable blanket to stop the unravelling.
The dead start to crowd out the living.
On the radio today, a terminally-ill neurologist
says (while I edge an old towel to extend its use)
that we can’t conceive of a world without us.
He says we’re programmed for a future:
When will I be hungry? Maybe in an hour?
That we can’t conceive of a world without us.
But this world is crowded with intimate ghosts.
When will they be hungry? Maybe in an hour?
There’s time for a city walk first
on this day so flush with familiar ghosts—
I’m taking the horse along for pleasure.
While there’s still daylight for a city walk
we’ll go shoulder to shoulder.
I’m taking the horse, her easy company,
iron shoes ringing off the sidewalk.
She moves at my shoulder
like an enormous chestnut fox,
her iron shoes clatter, coat gleams.
We were young, we were vixens.
We were like that, together.
I dreamed an arsonist torched the barn.
But our walk feels exactly as it did
when the horse was only six, in winter.
