Cold Pastoral, and: Nuts

Cold Pastoral

If John Keats had been born in the 1990s, attendedthe University of Virginia, maybe on a study abroad,he might still have written his urn ode. But I’m surehe wouldn’t have begun as he did,feminizing the urn, that clod of stonevalued mainly for its hole, inability to do anythingbut what it was made for, to store human lifeburned down. Nor could he have thoughtto further confine her, not just some girlbut an unravish’d bride. Because a brideunravished is as rare these daysas a conflict-free diamond, and to publicly equatewoman with rock is just so politicallywrong. And even if he were fool enoughto shock us with that phrase, and marry her indeedto quietness, unravish’d wouldn’t be the wordbut ravaged. As so many women he’d have known have been ravagedby eternity, who cut out their tongues, left them lying in a graveof broken glass in a room so far from the party raging beyondit may as well be ancient Greece. Lead’st thou that heiferthrough the brothers’ drafty mansion, past the mantle’s plastic cupstagged with three Greek letters that addressevery maiden who comes in heels:Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardare sweeter.

Nuts

When I read that the universe is made almost entirely of dark,dark energy that repels, dark matter that attracts,and none of that verifiably real, merely inferred

from effects on actual matter, slim bitthat we are, I remember the peanut I chucked onceinto Lake Michigan. How what was hard in my hand

sank into ripples, radiated out. And, as I did then,as I often do when I’m lost, I picture Godin a circus tent. Gone are the seats,

firelit hoops, high-wire for freaksto dance across. She’s sort of float-sitting therewith a paper bag, her fist inside, getting ready to make

her move. Well, not quite getting ready, not in a purposefulway, as she’s distracted by some nebulous thought, her fingerssifting as her mind surfs distant waves,

enjoying with unconscious pleasure the way her stashat once yields and provides pressure around her probing fingers,not reaching for a prize at the bottom—

there is none—or even a particular nut.Just moving for the sake of moving, the touchof something rough on her hands.