Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting Read Free Page B

through
    in ’83.

Songs in Planck Time
    I rank first among all things
    the new pine board
    Â Â 
    my father and I nailed
    into the half-collapsing dock
    Â Â 
    that lurched out back then
    when I was young
    Â Â 
    into the brackish end of the Mattaponi.
    I seem to recall something obvious
    Â Â 
    about the way that one board
    was devoid of natural qualities, was
    Â Â 
    out of place and undeveloped in time, was
    as yet unweathered as was I, the reverse
    Â Â 
    of which is mere endurance, an impotent
    going on; so add it to the list
    Â Â 
    of things that I am not, if something must
    be done with it:
    Â Â 
    not the prince of any
    even minor island. Not
    Â Â 
    and won’t be the hero of anybody’s story
    but my own, if that. Not
    Â Â 
    the ripple moving outward, not
    the flat of the oar that slapped the water,
    Â Â 
    not the sound it made that drove
    every bird from every branch at once, not
    Â Â 
    the sky they darkened with
    their flight. Not
    Â Â 
    my memory of you still on that long
    walk to the end of the dock,
    Â Â 
    jumping over every missing timber
    as if it might make a bit of difference when
    Â Â 
    you spread out your arms and paused, then
    finally fell into the water. Not
    Â Â 
    even briefly any father’s son, not any
    song we haven’t heard before.

The Abhorrence of Coincidence
    Look, out there
    that goddamn lame horse
    kicks up just the most recent of
    the newly dusted snow,
    Â Â 
    which forms into a pattern,
    a small ellipsis underneath
    the lightning-split dogwood tree
    you tried to mend
    with wood glue, bandages,
    and a spool of rusty bailing wire,
    Â Â 
    the end result of which
    was nothing more than a dead tree
    adorned with the trappings
    of some god-awful human injury.
    Â Â 
    You are out back by the barn now,
    hammering nails into
    eighty dollars’ worth of shoes
    for that damn horse
    you said we shouldn’t kill,
    Â Â 
    and I tap my finger on the window,
    and see myself mirrored in
    the nails you drove already,
    and in the manner of the impertinent roan
    who ran in circles in the snow
    this afternoon and made
    the dirt turn up, who turned
    the snow a little brown, the one
    you always lectured me about
    never trying to ride.
    Â Â 
    I remember when we had
    no horse, no pasture
    in which it could trample earth
    into a name, or if not a name
    something that would instigate
    my thinking on the time
    I said your name
    Â Â 
    over and over again
    as if it might be made
    into a kind of destiny,
    a destiny of saying, and being
    said, and by me, as if
    a pale ellipsis could of its own accord
    resist its being covered
    by a lame horse turning up
    the dirt a little more,
    Â Â 
    and so I write your name now
    in the breath I’ve left against
    the glass, the need for tapping
    gone, the surprise long passed
    from your saying in the night
    not names but something else,
    not destiny but, Hell, if I was anywhere
    but here I’d be just as much in love
    with someone else,
    Â Â 
    and so I breathe again
    and cover up
    your name,
    for I am not anywhere,
    and I am not else.

While Trying to Make an Arrowhead in the Fashion of the Mattaponi Indians
    We are born to be makers of crude tools.
    And our speech is full of cruel
    signifiers: you, me, them, us. I
    am sure we will not survive.
    Â Â 
    No. I am only certain that the
    pine trees that ring this lake in Virginia
    are occasional, that I sit between them
    at the water’s edge,
    Â Â 
    cast two stones against
    each other and rest.
    For we go down
    through these
    terrible hours
    together.

The Locks of the James
    History isn’t over, in spite of our desire
    for it to be. Even now, one can see
    the windfall of leaves gathering
    like lost baggage on the dirty pathways
    paralleling the old canal, itself resurrected
    in an attempt to reproduce a minor economic miracle
    that had taken place in a similarly middling city
    halfway across this continent. I