Soprano Tough Orange, and: The Bear, and: Snowover
- Soprano Tough Orange, and: The Bear, and: Snowover
Soprano Tough Orange
With a stutter and a sneeze,that's how, with catch ascatch can, with a quick
spritz of cologne, a shakeof good-luck charms. Where theycan, that's where, and if there
is a better place thanalong this highway, how woulda flower know? Like Day-Glo
bunnies they catch on, like a crazeof orange balloons trailingcars of newlyweds, they honk
the byways and center lane.A highway goes faster than anyflower in the world, knocks
heads off deer, sheers rockclean through. A seed takes offlittering commotion tizzies
and mango pops at everyservice plaza. Because they growout of wrappers blown
from fries and Mr. Fizziesbecause they blareeverywhere, let me not
take for granted a millionbells and whopper torches,let me not forget [End Page 19]
each carrot thrust—though howsomething ends is asmysterious as how it begins.
Blessed be orange for its brashand brazen, for its boldme too, me too.
Blessed be orange because itdespises nothing. In its honorlet me not forget the acrid
smoke of bloom and bust.Boombox of colors, promiscuousmusic blaring station to station,
let me mercy the seedthat does not orange, that landscrooked or double spins
through an open windowto swizzle my arm on the wheelwith its C above high C. [End Page 20]
The Bear
Oh, give us a thumbs up, give us a hwar and a hwil.For my last meal I will eat oysters and mother of pearl.
I have seen it perched on a railing,front and hind legs drawntogether as if by the invisible.
Its huge prints wear no seat belts and fillwith ice by morning.
See how it rears up in reflections, window by window.
How it floats above the East River and looks intoa hospital room, its muzzle bigas 42nd and Broadway.
Oh, give us a thumbs up, give us a hwar and a hwil.
Because of the bear, the operating room dimmed to twilightbelow zero, my arms crossed over my chest.
Who knew the way was corridor under corridor, eachabsence to be learned by heart.
To suffer the claws and feel no pain. To be strewnlike berries and seeds.
Oh, give us a thumbs up, give us a hwar and a hwil.
When the muscle was cut I gnarled.There is no alone like alone.
Why the bear appears to some in broad daylightand not to others, I have no idea.
To beget the bear—but what do I know of bear or beget?Oh, give us a hwar, a thirl, a whirl. [End Page 21]
I know only warble and glisten,the bird stuck in its throat.
The unmade I left unmade.
Let us not regret regret. [End Page 22]
Snowover
To stomp through drifts of snow and listenfor the crunch, crisp and swote.
Like biting into an apple with our feet.
How wonderful to spend day after day in a trainof snow, a whole car just for you and me.
How wonderful not to feel compelled to thinkof a better word than wonderful.
To search the Internet for the crunchand creak of someone walking through snow.
Cranch if we lived in the seventeenth century.
Snow falling on yards of junk, on rustingengines and factories.
On huge roots that could push up a city.
What a joy to say quinquangular and stretchmy mouth around your mouth.
To teeter the ridges between quartz and hunch.To prolong the crunch and say backstitchand eldritch, hotchpotch and crouch.
What is it like to be a rootsucking up rain, dirt, and snow fallingwithout purpose or goal?
Penetrating into the oldest covenants.Lapping the blood of billions.
Is there laughter in the hereafter?
Do you envy the rat its tailwith over two hundred scales? [End Page 23]
What a whiff of snow rushes the headphones.
Oh, honeybunch, if I met you in my sleepwould we lapspoon the possible?
Would we push up a whole...
