Sandra McPherson

She was in love with the same danger everybody is. Dangerous as it is to love a stranger, she was in love. With that same danger an adulteress risks a husband’s anger. Stealthily death enters a house: she was in love with that danger. Everybody is dangerous.

In memory of John Ashbery (1927–2017) A girl moaning:I don’t understand “Wave.”

I know a little what it is like, once here at high tide Stranded, for them to be so attached to the bottom’s Sarcophagus lids, up to their brown green gold wine Bottle necks in the prevailing booze, riding, as far As we can see, like a picnic on a blanket. Whatever plucks them from below the red horizon Like snapped pulleys and ropes for the pyramidal effort Of the moon, they come in, they come through the breakers, Heaps of hair, writing across the beach a collapsed Script, signers of a huge independence. Melville thought them pure, bitter, seeing the fog-sized Flies dancing stiff and renaissance above. But I Have eaten nori and dulse, and to have gone deep Before being cast out leaves hardly a taste of loneliness. And I take in their iodine.

B.D. was a decent poet but difficult to define or for himself to self-divine, a follower, a “gift” the way one seeker, loose but selective, identified himself to an intoxication reading obnubilating poems in a brick-and-river town: a generous, ecstatic overnight. A present, or an absence needing to be present, who tailed me, who mailed women years ago when he was free with his attention, a fixation that he felt attended him. Sometimes several times a week then several times a day he’d write me, for he was free to borrow books, go to the mailbox at 3 a.m., for it was urgent that he send a bride issue of Vogue,Bazaar, (not Seventeen, but Glamour, but not Ms.) from the Heartland where (Don’t forget our wedding date!) he bubble wrapped some trinkets, snapshots — poses of his parakeet beside his own long head meeting at an angle in a steely mirror. His wife, from her wheelchair, had made their camera flash. He tried to kill his wife with a little hammer

The names of things—sparks! I ran on them like a component: Henries, microhenries, Blue Beavers, wee wee ductors: Biographer of small lives, Of a plug and his girl named Jack, Of Utopian colonies which worked— Steel, germanium, brass, aluminum, Replaceables. Outside, afloat, my words Swung an arm charting the woman Who was the river bottom. We tried, beyond work, at work, To keep what we loved. Near Christmas I remember the office Women trimming their desperately Glittering holy day trees. And, Just as I left, the company Talent show, the oils and sentiment Thick on still lifes and seacoasts, The brush strokes tortured as a child’s First script. Someone Had studied driftwood; another man, The spray of a wave, the mania Of waters above torpedoes.

Heads were rolling down the highway in high slat trucks. I knew it was time to buy you and found you, The last sphere unscarred and undistorted in the store, Big as my own head. It was time too to leave you uncut and full-featured, Like the grandpa of twenty-five pumpkins in my past, Khrushchev-cheeked and dwelling on yourself, Great knee of my childhood. I plainly thought you would rot. I remembered the fetor of other pumpkins, Their blue populations coming out of hiding as if at the end Of some apocalypse. I devoted a day to reading up on minor cucurbits: I learned your dozen names in African And came home ready to raise or raze you, Positive of change. But so far—eternity. I think I would not like Eternity, after I had used my senses up, As I’ve tried with you—fingertips dragging over your world Pole to pole Till they go dead like explorers, nostril cilia Detecting your fragrance more delicate than they— And my patience. It’s Christmas, it’s a new year And I hear Of a family who’s kept you for four ... You endure like matter manufactured And indeed your stem seems punched into your orange gathers Like a button in a mattress. Shall I give you a room or a shrine? And shall I Purchase you a mate and family, When ours is so inadequate, fixed upon your window Deathbed as we are, Centered upon a time and birth, new holiday, new friends, New pumpkins, celebrating when all That has failed us has passed away. You have not failed.

The man vending needles at our door Was lucky to greet you. He looked poor but you acted needle-poor Where I’d have said, I don’t need ... He sells needles to prick your heart And they’ll take small bites Out of my finger in a layer of skin Where my feelings are thin. The old thread knitting together his many wools Might last another trudge To our porch: he came last year but I Refused and barely looked him in the eye. I’ve lost how many needles since then? Besides he is mute And would see how dumb we are to buy Three hundred needles for relief. But he supplied us to the end of life. I’ll give away some. And you might never use these points That push through cloth, cut to be made one.

I was making a new friend, blonde-gray, a living opal, pellucid, also reminding me of a green apple napping underneath its tree, where I have tumbled too, being of an age, “elderly” but undepressed, she tall enough to change the smoke alarm — sharing a ripeness that we liked comparing, bosses who couldn’t see us, perforation by divorce, retirement, and stairs. One lunch that I was looking forward to, the first thing on her mind — “Do you believe in the Occult?” — “Merline! No, I don’t think so.” She was in an auditorium — her older, deader sister sat right down beside her with a message — a large figure not her body but a sum — what did it mean? I’d thought one of us leaned forward at the lectern but a ghost was there, holding sway, or forth. Well, it came true — she’s richer by that sum — and urges making sure to be attentive to my dreams. She knows that it will happen — I’m her friend, as the Occult has been so far. I didn’t want my brother appearing in a dream to bring me news of unexpected income — if only I would pray about it first — to the God who had my brother die after all. And certainly not my sister prophesying ill on my behalf. I guess I’d stand up, put on a mike, look out at all the empty faces, make them look alive, and even cheer. Had I remembered a firsthand poltergeist, a temptatious legend ... I guess I’d accept a sleek Angora bunny in a mohair hat, or magic like a two-dollar bill, ask for a life my brother could have back.

Lions don’t need your help. In the Serengeti, For instance, one thousand like the very rich Hold sway over more than Connecticut. The mane Of the lion, like the hooked jaw of the male salmon, Acts as a shield for defense and is the gift Of sexual selection. His eyes are fathomless amber. The lion is the most social of the big cats. Pride members are affectionate among themselves. They rub cheeks when they meet. They rest And hunt together. And cubs suckle indiscriminately. But strangers or members of a neighboring pride are not Usually accepted. If a pride male meets a strange female He may greet her in a friendly fashion And even mate with her But the pride females will drive her off. Male lions, usually depicted as indolent freeloaders Who let the lionesses do all the hunting, are not mere Parasites. They maintain the integrity of the territory. Lions eat communally but completely lack table manners. Indeed, lions give the impression that their evolution Toward a social existence is incomplete—that cooperation In achieving a task does not yet include The equal division of the spoils. More bad news: lions are not good parents. But prowess, that they have. Their courage comes From being built, like an automobile, For power. A visible lion is usually a safe lion, But one should never feel safe Because almost always there is something one can’t see. Given protection and power A lion does not need to be clever. Now, lions are not the most likable kind of animal Unless you are a certain type of person, That is, not necessarily leonine in the sense of manly Or ferocious, but one who wouldn’t mind resting twenty Of twenty-four hours a day and who is not beyond Stealing someone else’s kill About half the time. Lions are not my favorite kind of animal, Gazelles seem nicer, A zebra has his own sort of appealing pathos, Especially when he is sure prey for the lion. Lions have little to offer the spirit. If we made of ourselves parks and placed the lion In the constituent he most resembled He would be in our blood.

One conversation, one only, remaining: It will be that give-and-take With Larry Littlebird — Oral listener — All about eagles, their shoulders, Ospreys, their plummet, And frogs, their singing Scratched by rain’s soft claws. But any of these exchanges will do: Charlie saying, If you can hum It you can play it, if you can play at all. And if not, sing with closed lips to yourself. Low continuous sound, your refrigerator. You must not be lonely. Harold says someone pointed out Being begins with a hum: It seems what you are, You’re happy hearing it, I’m happy for you, For each other, happy. Hear it in your colloquial throat, The syllable meaning human. Or, if not any of these intercourses, then Jenny and Chloe, who with a shake And a nod and a wave of an arm Toward the East say, We are going And we’ll go on your behalf And we’ll carry signs and shout The last best protest. Cerise and fuchsia Sisters, ears pointing out. Or my street signs: Calaveras (our skull’s tacit mouth) and Eisenhower — War, a theft from those who hunger And are not fed. Not a way of life at all. Crossed words on a corner pole. Movers pack me up, extract me From that conversation. I’ve heard a few words — they stay with me, An earned ear — and yet Too brief for brooding. Ghost Of my father, who never said much But Smell the roses for the camera; Or when I ask,Can I retire? He quickly says,Don’t hesitate! Any of these exchanges will do, “Now is the perfect time.” Not “For what?” but stopping it open. “April Fool,” said my favorite Eleanor, And then she died. “Good night,” her son Tipped his hat at me, From the top of the stairs, and then he tumbled. “I love you,” I contributed. And then I buttoned up.