WHILE THE POPE AND THE PRESIDENT MEET AT THE
FAIRBANKS AIRPORT, THE POET TAKES A WALK

​
Before the invention of eyes
only the nearness of things
counted. I walk down Rosie Creek
 
Road, and imagine the little
neon airport lounge you
are having a glass of sherry or
 
port in. Sitting across a knee-high
table on plastic upholstery— 
"And how was China, Mister
 
President?"—you come from
far corners and bless
the permeable conditions
 
which light throws out like jacks.
The ice on the Tanana's all gone
gray, the road is mud
 
despite the best efforts of
our local road committee. In China they
build walls, Rome's aqueducts
 
crumble in polluted air. Once
in St. Peter's Square my father
lost a watch. But none of that
 
seems to matter. In the circular
drift of my thought, I'm
proceeding quite well on my walk.
 
Stunned by the loud thwop-thwop
of a copter bouncing off the ridge
the dogs speak up for spring,
 
hating their chains. It's a bit
like war and peace meeting in
Fairbanks. Once when I was a kid,
 
Kennedy came to speak at the town
depot, a speech that was dead
on his lips. After that I didn't
 
go in for current events; instead
I speak for the greater irrelevancies.
The impudent pasque flower
 
knows what it thinks. It's a permanent
resident. The rest are passing through.
Hard to imagine dialogue for you,
 
a conversation between costumes.
But I bet there are smiles,
flashbulbs, a bunch of important
 
aides talking on walkie-talkies.
Is one of them phoning out
for pizza? Well, gentlemen,
 
you are welcome to Fairbanks
where juncos and chickadees flit
and flirt, the key is in the lock
 
and turning, and the warming river
loosens its thigh under
                flashing intermittent sun.
                                                May 2,1984
 

 
 
OUR 'CIVILIZATION'


​Just a scuzzy black puddle on the driveway.
All through the modern age our sense of self
has been diminishing, and on this dry morning
 
observe the edges of the puddle shrinking back,
leaving a residue of scum five molecules thick on the rough
surface of the blacktop, where the new Buick goes
 
back and forth through the day
as the wife goes out and back: to the dry-cleaner,
the hair-dresser, picks up her children
 
at school, her husband at the station.
Soon it is evening.
Lights on in the house and the television speaking.
 
I walk through the darkness and come to the puddle.
At a certain angle the half-moon
is reflected, as I totter on the edge looking down,
 
for this is a puddle I could fall into,
fall deep deep and swim like an eel in the ocean
among the coral and the stones
 
and the old tires and rusted cans
which have drifted out here miles from shore
on which algae grow, and where the fry, the guppies
 
that I live on make their homes.
In the vast ocean I slither along the bottom
through the cold muck, a dark electric thing
 
of which the children are not taught at school, 
of which the television makes no mention. 
Then, after the children have been put to bed
 
one by one the lights in the house click off
and the shrunken puddle fills up the darkness.
I swim through windows and doors
 
and populate the house with dreams.
I am a needle swimming through the eyes of dreamers, 
each soul in the house a patch sewn into a quilt.
 
But somewhere a child (the little girl) 
has thrown her cover to the floor.
She sits up in the dark shivering and yells
 
yells yells out at the sensible night.
The others rush in and say hush, it is nothing, nothing at all, 
and after a while she calms herself, is consoled
(tomorrow the puddle will be gone), and sleeps.
 
                                               
  
 

THE SUPPRESSED


The end of the world again, well
here we are, monks beating on glass
with our bare skulls.
 
Observed behind glass this delicacy:
girls placing flowers on a grave.
The tears rolling down their cheeks
 
are little tanks. And all
we can accomplish
is prayer.
 
Oh history, inelegant stammerer,
do I hear that the nation of my hopes
goes under again?