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224 f r o m g o u r d s e e d s l e e t for Harold Parrish First calendar day of winter I drive up to the mountains, sleet-slushy roads, and don’t make it, leave the truck with its passenger-side load of books and groceries and wine a mile and a half back at a turn-off place and walk in with one plastic bag of bargain chicken thighs. It is supposed to warm up tomorrow. Chicken on low, with every spice and herb I own, smelling wonderful, even red pepper. Two years ago a poetry student of mine who went on sort of aimlessly to English graduate school—you could not imagine him teaching a class, very withdrawn and reckless and sweet—would come to my office and stand around while I was working , blurting out anything self-consciously strange and giggling like he did when he read his poems. Why don’t vampires dress in plaid?—has been found frozen to death in his car. He had been drinking and passed out behind his father’s house, neglected to go in and get to bed one real cold night. I have checked out his master’s thesis from the departmental office and have it here in the cabin. Some service is due him, some notice. Some blame attaches to me. We used to have a poetry group when he was an undergraduate. We drank too much red Gallo, and I should have warned him away from graduate study that couldn’t lead anywhere, that made him depressed and frustrated. I have heard he had been looking for a job for two years before he died. No openings, so he had gone back to stay with his parents in Rossville. Everybody called him Parrish. When you met him in the hall, you’d say “Parrish,” louder than need be, and he’d smile and nod elaborately. His thesis is about the wedding-feast in the Middle English poem Cleanness, or Purity, which was bound in the Gawain manuscript. One invited guest to the banquet has torn and messy clothes, an allegory for the impropriety of spiritual carelessness in the presence of the Lord. Parrish, himself famously scruffy, writes well about that filthy figure. Fallen man, saved, invited to the feast, goes, but in old clothes, still pleased with sinning. The misty sleet slicks and seems to clean everything tonight. Even this near-to-rotten shard of plywood I bring in to burn is a gleaming gift, enameled. Emanuel. In dream recently Parrish was barkeep and keeping the bar open after closing time to let me have a special beer and tell me of his new love, Jessica Savitch, the 225 f r o m g o u r d s e e d newslady. We try to find her address in the phonebook on Lila Drive, and do. I realize that I too am in love with Jessica Savitch and had not realized it until now, but I don’t tell Parrish and won’t interfere. We go to the ridge where she lives where there is a school where everyone learns how to praise, constantly honoring the glory of God. Parrish says he doesn’t think he has much chance to court her with that kind of competition around. End of dream. One way I clean up is to buy an empty book to keep a weather-and-other-natural-observations journal in: December 21st, low 20s. An inch of sleet this afternoon starting around 2:30, misting crystals till midnight, great slender lozenges of ice on the creek, ten, twenty feet long. Midnight to 10 a.m. a warm, Gulf-of-Mexico drizzle comes and makes the ice-sheathing drip and turn loose. Simple notation to balance my dream obsessions. I have napped many a time between towns on the carseat with my pony-express satchel for pillow, sleeping off each successive night’s ragged enthusiasm. Learn what I seem to have great difficulty learning: there is a bright-cold sobriety, a steady calm sleet, that includes every possible drunkenness. Don’t get tipsy with the wine of beings loving being, that song. More times, wait for clear pin-sounds to touch leaves and grass and railing and roof. In this allegory, cleaning means watching and listening, tk-tk-tk-tk-tk, quiet everywhere-noticing, not the celebration-recuperation cycle I have had enough schooling...

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