Grace, Fallen from. Marianne Boruch
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she’d say,
see? I remember the fifth grade, he said,
those endless afternoons, don’t you?
Not one, she said. They got quiet, the river
on their left now, the water
too low. The whole world
needed rain. But she flashed
on that strange little
storefront in Oregon once,
the counterman saying: why, there
you are! I’ve been waiting a decade
for you to walk in here.
Then she was telling it, outloud, in the air. Probably
a pick-up line, he said. What
were you? 20? 22? Sudden click
in her head, a double take, two
exposures, one picture,
the first shock of it back
from the photo lab:
and here I thought
it merely some brilliant bit of the novel
my life was writing. Did they pause?
Because I hear him about to say:
so you kept it, that’s
funny. They walked on. A field
opened up. Is that
a song sparrow
or a white-throat? he said. I can’t remember, she said, notes
rushing downward but three clear
hesitations before that great
blurring. It got darker,
crooked ash and ivy, an overgrown
path where I stopped.
Where the two of them
kept going.
NICE
I can be nice. I can put my body
flat, down straight, and pull
sleep from somewhere deep
in the brain, that no-weather
thing, that blank page-
after-page thing. I can be
nice enough and say nothing, drift
to the cool room under
a blanket, under all the things
I have to do. Count them. Count
forward or backward: glue
broken things, fill the feeder,
work for a living, make supper, go
anxious unto guilty unto
anxious, full circle. I can love
humankind. I can do that.
I can close my eyes on the bright
windows my neighbors have
framing their big TVs. I can understand.
I can be nice when others decide, steeling
myself, but not as well as my tiny
grandmother did, the tallest person
in the room for a moment. I can, mostly,
drive past Burger King, its Good Luck
Staci (oh, Stacy with an i!) We Miss You!
on whatever the marquee’s
called now, be touched and sweetened
or nice enough not to notice. And bite
my tongue. Good doggy. Be nice now, be
nice. I can sacrifice muscle
and bone to sit longer, showing
interest (show interest, my mother warned
as we walked through any really large
set of doors). I know German has
a word, nett, for nice. I can put myself
in that net, drop down so close
to what is underwater
that the fish know me as small,
silent, as sleek and shiny as
they happen to be. And so
weightless there, blue
beyond thought. One would hardly
guess how nice it is, those fish
suspended next to me, their mouths
opening and closing.
SEVEN AUBADES FOR SUMMER
day one
I read the roof next door. I read
the shingles, their stony
overlap, the stubborn look
my grandmother gave me: I won’t
walk that street. I hate
those people. But she didn’t
say that. I was a child. And to protect
is to change the subject
and leave the wound, only
one of us
staring down and down. So it was
she clipped the brown glass
to her glasses and we
took a different route. Brick
sidewalk, weedy grass. The shrug
of a small town. And her steel,
a flash of it. One bird out there
can’t get over his song. To repeat
is to remember. To remember is to go
on and on. Anyway, my husband
said this morning, throwing back
the sheet.
day two
No one take credit. It came to me
in a dream is all anyone
can say. The dream of two sparks
makes another spark. And if only
I could think beyond and more oddly, this
stolid whatever-it-is, this stanza
a room, just a figure in a doorway
about to leave
or to enter. It was my mother
come back to life, so much younger
as I slept, plotting herself
out of a marriage. So I finally
witnessed it, the moment she opened and closed
and opened. But how did it end?
My standing there, my wanting to . . .
And the sequel, her
splintered