Pelican Tracks

Living in OH

 Living in OH Small world, the newswise say: the mean and the main streets, Hayseed and steel, three-piece families around the firebrick, all making Crosscut numbers for the poll, a trial market for Frozen Fatfree Velveetaon -a-Stick. Where I live, in a split-level house near the heart of Highlow Hollow, Just east of Euphoria, just west of the Fortunate Falls, midway Through the moods and months of the year, in the slow days of Messidor, Among the sons flailing their air guitars or jacking up jalopies, among Daughters all named Jennifer or Heather, Dawn and Nicole, where the wives will Spit on your best pants and press an iron to the fly, sizzling it flat, I’m no Swinburne-Jones of the painted syllable, but a sub-contractor Putting in the pipes and traps of the line, sweating the joints, my only hobby Performing parlor tricks with blunt instruments and a marked deck. Dead center in this settlement, on this square board of squares, where any of us Could be kinged or kangarooed on the next move, we’re testing out The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Newton’s notion that the world Won’t work without change, spontaneous response in a flow of heat: Does entropy increase in this isolated system? Does the deep kiss Chafe at the lips, or pass passion through the trading tongues? We take all this with a grain of gestalt, like looking at The duck-rabbit of Wittgenstein, its truth neither down nor fur, But the eye suspended in liquid shifts, the shape of everything negotiable.  We’ve found that half-measures even out the odds, and have learned to speak Not from the gutter or the dark study, riprap of books on a shaky case, But from the mall, the Toyota showroom, making poetry safe for The middle class, citizens of the sitcom and the barbecue, a tang of smoke Rising from the high-priced fat that drips and hisses on the coal, a cloud That shadows the lawn a moment, then drifts far off into the ruins, City of the blade and the broken bottle, city under siege by Children of the gun, where bellies rumble like a subway braking in, A scent of something to sink the teeth in, the tease of a greener ground, As the weatherwoman smooths her locks on the late news, smiling Through tornadoes, through floods that float the dead away, and then misreads her cue, Tomorrow will be warm and human, another promise our kind can’t keep. ...