Sun In Days

1 I tried to live that way for a while, among the trees, the green breeze, chewing Bubblicious and by the edge of the pool      spitting it out. The book open on my chest, a towel at my back      the diving board thwok ing, and leaving never arrived      Cut it out my mother said     my brother clowning around with a water gun Cut it out. The planes arrowed into silence, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, always coming home from summer     over the bridge to Brooklyn. The father stabbed on Orange Street, the Betamax in the trash, the Sasha doll the dog chewed up, hollow plastic arms gaping. Powdered pink lemonade, tonguing the sweet grains liquid-thick. I could stand in that self   for years wondering is it better to anticipate than to age     Imagining children with five different men, a great flood that would destroy your possessions     and free you to wander. Bathing suits and apples and suntan oil and a mother bending over you shadow of   her face on yours. It’s gone, that way, the breeze, the permanent pool. A father saying “ghost” and the sheets slipping off   the oak tree’s bough. When I wake, leaves in the water. You could say green forever and not be lying. 2 The pond near the house in Maine where we lived for one year to “get away” from the city     the pond where the skaters     on Saturdays came, red scarves     through white snow, voices drawing near and     pulling away, trees against the clouds. Trying to live off   the land for a while. Too hard in the end my father said.     What did he say? Forget it     you weren’t listening     He wore fishing overalls most days and stank of   guts. Our shouts slipping, the green garbage cans edging the white scar pond, so many days like secrets about to be divulged . . . White snow; to stink of   fish guts but     to be trying to live:               the pond near the house and the sound of   voices     drawing near. As you aged you got distracted, indebted. In the hospital around my mother the machines     beeped, the long leads of   the heart monitor, drooping parabolas. It’s not worth dying for     she said. What was it she meant? Swollen shells, the desiccated brown seedpods we used to pinch onto our noses and skate about     putting on airs. Then the books opened their pages and with our red woolen scarves flying and the Freezy Freakies’ once-invisible hearts reddening into the cold we disappeared. Evian bottles skitter against the chain-link fence. It’s gone     that way     the green planes arrowing into silence     gum wrappers slipping to the ground. O wild West Wind     be thou our friend and blow away the trash. Salvage us from     the heap of our making and Cut it out my mother said     Stop worrying about the future, it doesn’t belong to us and we don’t belong to it. 3 The surface more slippery, slick and white the ice. I stand at the pond’s edge gather the information     darkening there hello algae     hello fish pond my mind in the depths     going. On the beach I dig, tunnel to the hands of   the woman who stitched this red shirt     holes all the way to China. It got so easy to     get used to it, the orchestration of meaning against the night, life a tower you could climb on not a junk heap     pale picture books yellowing on the shelves. It got so     I close my eyes and walk along the hospital hall. The iris quivering in the March light, a nurse taking my mother’s pulse not paid enough to help us as we wished to be helped. And your hope left behind     turning the pages of   magazines, the models in Prada. As a girl it was a quest, to feel exploded every second, pudding pops     and Vietnam vets standing on the corner shaking their Styrofoam cups.     Holding her cup my mother stands, petting the dog, it’s 1982     the sun tunneling in     she drinks her coffee Cut it out or     Forget it or     Hello. Look, I’ve made a telephone for us. Put that cup to your ear, and I’ll put it to mine, and listen     I just need to find one of those Styrofoam cups and what about you     where did you go what kind of night is it there electric synthetic blackened or burnt. 4 At night they come to you distorted and bright, like an old print on a light box, present,     present,          not quite. Are we inventing them as we sleep, or are they still     happening in a time we can’t touch? The hockey game on the blue tv glowing and slowing     I come home to a man slumped on the couch not-quite-saying a greeting     all the gone ones there the slap of skates     all gone and the commentator it’s going on forever the blade moving along rink says What a slapshot what a shot. You make a life, it is made of days and days, ordinary and subvocal, not busy becoming what they could be,               dark furlings of tiny church feelings, mysterious, I mean, and intricate like that high-windowed light — intricate and mysterious          I come home. Near our house we hung out on the Promenade after school the boys smoking the security systems in the Center blinking     a disco party blue red / blue red the East River reflecting scraped sky     cornices and clouds we could hear the roar of cars across it and taste the chemical air of   the offices the fathers worked in we’d been there to pick them up for the long weekend in the Catskills the hum-gray computers, the ibm Selectrics massive on the desks, eleven, twelve, thirteen, riding the graffitied subways, flirting, the boys     grabbing us calling     hey     hey. Changeable one day to the next. Jon talking of atheism blond hair in strips          At night the bomb mushrooming over the Statue of   Liberty, white blinding everywhere.          Oh, she said, don’t worry just a dream          just a dream. Everyone is scared of   Russia. Imagine          she laughed     We used to have to hide under our desks! Forget it     you weren’t listening     I was trying Don’t worry it gets you nothing to tell you something     the air cold the maples bare your mother pregnant Come on the horses are     past the window with a son much younger than you of   the house she rode them past the river where all the Catholic kids sailed ice boats uncles taking cash to wire home to Ireland. The future isn’t here yet, it’s always going to be,     but I’m holding you, walking the Promenade, thirty-six, the ferry crossing the river again. 5 and for a while               rain on the dirt road and the pastured gray horse     holding Chex Mix up to its fuzzed mouth     pockets of   time all summer     eating  ghosts in the arcade Pac-Man alive quarter after quarter I keep trying     Cut it out she said and forget it     I was trying to tell you my father cooking fish in the kitchen licking his thumb     to turn the page. In the meantime you try not to go into a kind of exile — Oh, you read too many books, says my friend Dan     Here’s the tv . And the small voices of children     enter the room, they sound so narrow and light and possible. But don’t you think we’re always making the same standing at the car rental kind of mistake we began by making at the last minute, rushing to call our fathers before setting off for vacation.     It’s warmer this August than it has been for decades. Still the sun bathing us isn’t preposterous or cold.          Grace: imagine it and all the afterworld fathers sleeping with their hair perfectly          combed faces mortician-clean unlike the ones they wore. In the motel Reagan on tv his hair in that parted wave     the milk prices up, my mother says, inflation.     Key Food on Montague, the linoleum tiles dirty and cracked, the dairy case goose-pimpling my skin. Those tiles are still there. She is dead now     and so is he. I know it seems bare to say it bare to     bare linoleum tiles. You who come after me I will be underfoot but     Oh, come off it, start again. We all live amid surfaces and                    and I wish I had the     Start over     Come on thou Step into the street, amidst the lightly turning trash, your hair lifting in the wind     Remember I have thought of   you the lines of our skates converging in a future etc. etc., the past the repository of   what can be salvaged, grace watering the basil on the windowsill, until the day comes of   looking back at it all, like a projectionist at a movie slipping through the reel, the stripped sound of   time — I tried to live that way for a while Bubblicious and          spitting it out Only forget it you          were if   I could hear your voice     again     I could pretend Rise and shine she called in the morning     Rise and shine leaves in the water     intricate and the dying Dutch elms the cool blue pool pockets of    time          Sun-In bleaching our hair the faces they wore     arcade ghosts and lilacs by the door in Maine where she leaned     close to me     said smell the planes buzzed     a purple light     fingers sticky if   I could only hear it again     you could say forever     tonguing the sweet grains     you could say forever     and not be