Strangers. Rob Taylor
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We snap out our chopsticks and talk about the weather. After a lull I start in about the Lake Vostok project in Antarctica and how it took them over twenty years to drill down to the surface of the lake, four thousand metres under the ice. That’s interesting, she says. Then the waiter arrives with our food. She mangles her California roll and I burn the roof of my mouth on my deep-fried tofu. Eventually she lays her chopsticks down across her bento box and tells me that her friend’s doing better, though the cancer is still killing her. She’s so skinny now but she bought herself a new wardrobe and can drive her car, so it’s not all that bad yet. That’s good to hear, I say. The lake is almost as large as Lake Ontario, I add, and it’s been trapped under ice for fifteen million years. Then we both say one or two things and somehow we end up talking about her parents, how her mom’s folks hated her father so much that he packed up the family and moved north to the mining town just to get away from that mess. The waiter comes around again with the green tea. Neither of us wants more, but we smile politely as he pours. Your dad would have liked the Lake Vostok project, I say. They set a record by drilling the world’s deepest ice core. That’s something, she says. The waiter brings the bill and she takes it before I get the chance. When he returns with the change it’s an awkward amount so I chip in a dollar for the tip. They fill the borehole with Freon and kerosene so it doesn’t freeze between drillings, almost sixty tons of the stuff so far. That doesn’t sound good, she says. No, I say, but they don’t think it will contaminate the lake because as soon as they break the surface, water will rush up the borehole and freeze, sealing out the chemicals. Well I hope so, she says, pulling on her jacket. On our way out we pass a table with a mother and three kids. All the kids have sticky rice in their hair or on their face but none of the four seems to mind. You should write a poem about that, she says. She’s never said anything like it before. About what, I ask. But she can’t hear me over the street noise and has already moved on to something else.
Speak When Illuminated
I lie in bed, await three knocks from my parents’ side
of our adjoining wall, one each for I, love, and you—
then I reply, with one more added on for too.
And only then we sleep.
I dream I’m in an elevator: an adult, poet,
stubble-cheeked. My father dead, expectedly.
My mother married once again and happy.
My own wife in our home, expectant.
Then the elevator sticks.
I root my fingers in the door. It doesn’t give.
I press the button, panic-red, attempting to call out—
to whom? Some maintenance guy? A telecom employee
in Chennai? Speak When Illuminated
reads the sign that doesn’t light.
To myself, I realize, my mind half waking
from the dream. I am my only rescue.
I stare into the bulb to make it shine.
My wife is out there waiting; my manuscripts
and friends. My mother and my father just outside.
Yes, even him.
My waking mind insists it cannot be. He’s too old
to have lasted out these years. No, he’s just behind
the wall, I say into myself. I’ll show you now.
I knock three times upon the metal door.
Four knocks ring back.
My waking mind falls silent, yields the floor.
I am not a child anymore.
A Normal Day
Rain. The sound of it on the roof. A song on the radio
I’ll almost remember tomorrow. Just enough light
to write by. A lamp I know I should switch on.
Soda crackers. Hot water with lemon. Dishes in the sink,
few enough I can put them off a while. In the afternoon
I’ll call my mother and we’ll talk about nothing,
the weather. I’ll ask if it’s raining there and she’ll say yes.
We’ll share some news about family or football,
and maybe reminisce a bit: my childhood, my father,
her life before us both. But mostly the rain,
which will lighten and finally stop around dinner
while my wife and I are filling the house with our talk
so we will not notice the change until hours later,
sitting in bed. One of us will lower their book
and mention it in passing. Or maybe
it will still be raining then, so we’ll say nothing
and in the morning we won’t be certain
if it ever stopped, or when it did
and when it started up again.
Love, fidelity, etc.
I do not wear you
when I shower, when I sleep,
when playing sports or making things,
my knuckles thick in dirt or grease,
though I wear you now on the hand
behind my head, which tilts it to the page.
Remember when I lost you
those six months beneath the driver’s seat?
You must have hidden in my pocket—
the one inside the other—
and when I wriggled out the keys
you ventured too.
Folks think you represent
but we both know you’re
up there in the darkness of my hair
or, one time, waiting in the car.
When I rediscovered you
we were both prodigals’ fathers
grieving our sons,
though it was my hand, of course,
reached out in welcome,
my mouth that rushed the story to my wife.
Yes, you arrived with my marriage.
You’ll go at the end, off to some necklace or pouch
or you’ll linger years in the earth
until all you encircle is earth
and a scavenger prospects you up,
as I did, from the muck.
It wasn’t much. I was in the field.
I knelt. My hands were bare.
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