Waking Bodies

Drought Notes

49 Drought Notes Pressure at my temples like a balm to relieve The pressure that preys beneath it . . . Why would anything want to be understood? I loathe not the aftermath but the moment Of comprehension. No more pain Gleaned from the dead run of enlightenment (Where the sails swell but no wind is felt) Than from the ignorant darkness . . . That instant, that epiphanic crack is my plague, And the echoing thud—a code broken, Like a raccoon by a car’s headlit prow, and thrown Open for all to see, the spasm, the spine Of unintelligibility thwarted, bent into some Letter of some alphabet.The body of Imminent knowledge, which is all innocent life, Supports its cargo in secrecy, and so naturally Craves the shadows that prolong it. b Here lies the lover’s lesson, and the rocket Ship’s, too, from within whose elaborate Scaffolding the first I love you is jettisoned out Of time into space. Flight is black and white, Feet are either firmly planted on the ground Or not. So it was in the beginning, my own Feet very much land-locked and restless At the state-owned and -operated parking lot’s edge . . . 50 The freshly painted asphalt surrendered To the weed-rich red Georgia clay Like a second to a first, more formidable Wife, the one with the kids.The trails, Evidently to weed out the less serious hiker, Were marked blue and red, easier and more Difficult, like arteries and veins in the body Of a spring-wakening forest, but it was A third branch of trails, one more suited To goats or death-wishers and marked off By yellow posts like the faithful who cheer Their wrongly accused and convicted Champion along the road to prison, that Decided me. My seduction had less of Frost to it than Faust. b The first days of a drought always pass Like contemporaries of no particular Beauty or distinction who will later become famous, Mobbed and asked for Autographs wherever they go. b 51 What lured me to the waterfall was the fall Itself, the sheer serial plunges and dropoffs Even the unrelieved Earth (an inexorable Handicap ramp of a slope to Key West Eight hundred miles away) seemed grateful for. The time, not just to think, but of things, And the warm space such conception requires, I crave adulterously, and as I proceeded down The path to my destination, each succeeding Signpost was like a removed garment Tossed at my feet. I came to my senses, which Always seem to be waiting for me in places like this, As suddenly as if brakes had been applied. When I stopped, everything that claimed citizenship To the past, friends, relatives—all my dead, The illegitimate, legitimizing memories which Had been trailing me and fighting For position like bicyclists in the draft Of an eighteen-wheeler Truck, surged past me, and disappeared. b Dogwoods. Squint and the bract-blossoms Stagger across your liberated vision’s plane Like a late city’s surviving lit windows. If every window winds up making light Of whoever draws it blinds, two weeks From now each flower will abandon Its branch, and illuminate the earth it lands on. b 52 The azalea-scented, dogwood-studded glades Gave way then, like now, to this resort Of ferns, where the youngest members of the oldest Phylum disport themselves with neither Modesty nor motion, their one-piece suits Rolled down to their waists as they soak In the pine, fir, oak, and tulip-tree shadows Beside what passes, provided I confine My gaze to the hours between eleven and one, For a mountain pool. I don’t think about Work. b A month later, last flower over, summer Beginning to add up.The dogwoods evict us From the present, only to move us Into a more expensive tense. Denied the beeches’ Or the maples’ fullness, fulfillment (June, July,August) eludes them. They hang out leaves from their foolish Limbs like “Now Leasing” signs. Drought, too, throws us out, into remembered rain. b Days dogged by days, of so little wasted Motion as to suggest winter, and night. b 53 This summer, rain is the romance novel All nature is reading. Even so, the burgeoning Waist of Angel’s Creek (how can it be?) Makes me hope for depth, and life beneath...