So I was afraid to speak up, speak well, 
afraid of rank snakeskin, fishscale, mushroom, 
and when it rained, afraid of the lightning 
no one can see, afraid of tornadoes 
slicing across the TV weathermap 
and the day-after front page photograph. 
When wind slackened I was afraid of flood, 
of the dark that passes all understanding. 
So I was afraid of the knucklebones 
of my sick grandfather, wrapped all day 
around his pipe, knocking ashes down: so. 
So I feared the rebellion of my cells, 
that past my growing years they might not stop, 
as shadows on the bedroom wall revealed 
my shape-shifting, fear-laden silhouette. 
So if I had reasons for my unreason, 
when morning came I forgot my fear 
as a mother forgets each labor pain. 
So I feared the examined life I would lead, 
though throughout life I have remained a child, 
with brimming fear at every open door, 
with fear elastic and often welcome, 
with one eye on the ceiling, one on the floor, 
for the one will fall, and the one will rise, 
and nothing to fear but nothing itself.

One song says it right: a whole lotta shakin's
going on: upheavals in other lives
I read about with bagel and coffee
before I pack my briefcase and forget
my way to work. When I ask my students
who Joseph Stalin was, or when World War I
ended, I get row upon row of blanks.
And these are people, I complain to friends
in barrooms, who know every World Series
like a catechism, who know to the cent
how much an engineer or lawyer makes.
Am I much different? I know each song
the Beatles recorded, but could not give
any clear apology for my life.
History comes with its own radio:
haunted tunes I recall as year of war,
year of riots, year of school or marriage.
 
I listen for history's jazz, but the music
of what happens is a poor thing compared
to the great as if, which is music jazzed
beyond reproduction. One night I heard
a blues guitar so fine it was like
a dentist's drill full of love, a conversation
between one scripture and the next.
That man onstage in his blue suit,
that corny, fat father of the beer
commercials, played his jive so hard it came
true, right there in the smoky spotlight where
I'll never be. I loved even his jazz
between numbers, jokes old enough to shine.
I take that night's improvisation as fact:
scat sung well replenishes thin voices.
I loved how a phrase, left hanging by
the trumpet, would be gathered in his hands
and strung like a spiderweb in the light.

They say the rain in this country has teeth, 
that it eats tin off roofs of summer camps. 
Green Lake is nearly blue. Blue Lake's so pale 
you can watch cloud-froth slide across its sand 
and think this world a perfect mirror of 
itself. Though the Adirondacks are old 
life here is new, and hard: on glacier-scraped rock 
lichens and mosses took thousands of years 
to build enough soil for a fern or shrub. 
 
It's easy to say thin soil makes hard lives. 
After Labor Day, when gift shops are shut, 
docks beached, and pipes drained in summer houses, 
you can begin to hear the loons calling 
from the invisible heart of the lake. 
They say hardship though it sounds like laughter. 
They say slim pickings and head for the sea. 
 
We leave too, my friend, back to our jobs and 
telephones. Who remains? It's easy to say 
they are the stoic guardians of life, 
that their trailers and wasted gardens 
are matters of choice. Snow flies by Halloween. 
Concentric rings of snowmobiles will park 
in the neon halo of each year-round bar. 
 
This county without a stoplight was home 
to my family once. Now I'm a guest, 
you're my guest, and when like garbage-spoiled bears 
we return to this greatly emptied house 
I suppose ours will be no life they could 
recognize. We're no more than ink splashes 
on maps held in the minds of natives. Let's 
sing a lunatic song of praise anyway: 
of course this evergreen air smells of boat fuel, 
naturally the trout died and rose again 
as a story we cannot live without. 
 
All rain is acid, eating the landscape 
in memory. Any map's temporary, 
like a family tale altering itself, 
like a difficult friend improving with time.