Eleanor Ross Taylor

The fork lived with the knife and found it hard — for years took nicks and scratches, not to mention cuts. She who took tedium by the ears: nonforthcoming pickles, defiant stretched-out lettuce, sauce-gooed particles. He who came down whack. His conversation, even, edged. Lying beside him in the drawer she formed a crazy patina. The seasons stacked — melons, succeeded by cured pork. He dulled; he was a dull knife, while she was, after all, a fork.

That bag you packed me when you sent me to the universe— camp after camp I’ve opened it debating whether to unpack— Not yet, not yet— Why did I feel so much in it was dangerous on the playground, too good for everyday, feel those splendid fireworks hazardous to institutions, unmannerly to etiquette, so that, time after time, I found myself saying Not yet? At each new place I faced it, it suggested, Here spread out your things, put on this coat, open this bottle— No, not yet . . . sometimes throwing something out, giving things away, lightening my load. . . . The more I pull out, the more it seems, some days, is left inside, the heavier it is. Sometimes I think this package is almost a door the opening of which careening across heaven could be fatal. Some days now I wonder if I’ll ever dare face my given garments— permanently wrinkled, surely out of date— your travel-thought wasting in its tissue, flesh-corrupt— till I’ve absorbed it, like those stitches that dissolve in an incision where something’s been removed.

A mothball May. I lean against the kitchen wall. The sacred pear tree on the hill. The skyline, small green wheat waverunning with the wind. From west to east the green’s spanned out by men on horseback and on foot, men with long staffs slow-motion, searching. The saddles glint. What are they sweeping for? Why coming this direction? Are those staffs guns? If  they are after quail, or hares, why is their fanning law-enforcement grim, as for a felon, a missing person, or one too imbecile to find her way? One who laid waste the safe place by the kitchen wall, bankrupted her May day, malpracticed pear and gifted wheat? I’m waiting, men.