The Day's Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech Read online

  Mystic Falls, Old Faithful of course. How strange

  these places looked compared to where we lived.

  Were these the wonders we’d been promised?

  At the water’s edge a grizzly devours the carcass

  of an elk; a black wolf creeps out of the pines.

  Furniture

  How devious is our perception of rapidity.

  The facial movements of human beings

  skitter about like the flight of swallows.

  The facial movements of tables and chairs

  are more discreet in their outward gestures.

  Such is the case with all inanimate objects.

  The foolish would say that stationary objects

  remain stationary. This is false. They move

  a little faster than raindrops sculpt a rock.

  Why hurry? What is won by hasty action?

  This is why you never see a chair quarreling

  with another chair; rather, they contemplate

  the virtues of passivity, which is the reason

  chairs are so very kind, tables also. They see

  human beings as only a blur as we rush and

  rush and then arrive at our end. They see us

  as we might see a speeding bullet. You ask

  what persistent thought has brought them?

  They arrive at certainty before, not after,

  an event. They have solved the problem

  of unexpected results from random causes.

  They have discovered the square root of pi.

  Most of all, their work has shown them the path

  of inflexible humility. Humbly, they let us

  knock them about, stack them in a corner,

  sell them from an auction block. Yet always

  they offer us the other cheek. Let us study

  their calm to become stronger, hiding desire

  as disinterest, guile as composure. But no,

  they don’t like us; they have never liked us.

  Water-Ski

  The gift of putting something down, he had yet to discover it—letting it slide from his grip. You’d think it would be easy; an opening of the fingers and the person, humiliation, failure would float away. Instead, he kept going over the details, the variations and possibilities; what would have happened if he had done this or that. And so the ill-fated event occurred not once but a thousand times. He recalled those occasions years before when he’d tried to water-ski. There was always a moment after he fell when he hesitated to release the rope and was dragged roughly over the surface of the water. It was like that now. Let go, let go, he shouted to himself, as the hard surface of what he called his life pummeled and raked his skin.

  Leaf Blowers

  That autumn morning he awoke to the crying

  of lost souls that quickly changed to the roar

  of leaf blowers up and down the block. Still,

  the lost souls hung on, although only as idea,

  as if the day’s cloudy translucence had become

  the gathered dead circling the earth. Nothing

  he believed, of course, but the thought gave flesh

  to the skeletal lack, who assumed their places

  on imaginary chairs and couches: acquaintances,

  old friends, relatives, as impatient as patients

  in a doctor’s waiting room, an internist late

  from a martini lunch.

  Yet it was him, his attention

  they seemed to crave. Did it matter they were false?

  They were real as long as he imagined them.

  And their seeming need for him, surely the opposite

  was true, as if they formed the ropes and stakes

  tying down the immense circus tent of his past,

  till, as he aged, the world existed more as pretext

  to bring to mind the ones who had disappeared.

  This morning it was leaf blowers, in the afternoon

  it might be something else, so as time went by

  the palpability of what was not, came to outstrip

  the formerly glittering quotidian, till all was seem,

  seem, ensuring that his final departure would be

  as slight as a skip or jump across a sidewalk’s crack,

  perhaps on a fall morning with sunlight streaking

  the maples’ fading abundance. Afternoon, evening,

  even in the dead of night, waking to clutch his pillow

  as he slipped across from one darkness to the next.

  Parable: Heaven

  At first it seemed as nice as the real Heaven—

  a little eating, a little fucking, a little nap,

  then a little eating again, the cycle repeating

  over and over. But maybe Forever would be

  too much, even a century would be a struggle,

  even a year. In time the fun would begin to pale—

  a little eating, a little fucking, a little nap. Sure,

  the others were terribly nice, if not too quick

  in the head at least. Lush fields, oaks in full leaf—

  a veritable Garden of Eden. In the nursing home,

  when she and Rosie had discussed the option

  of Heaven, each swore if she were taken first,

  she’d come back to tell the other what it was like.

  But Heaven meant being a rabbit in Wisconsin.

  Wouldn’t she be ashamed to visit Rosie now?

  Even if she hurried back to the nursing home,

  she was sure to be caught and wind up in a stew.

  Negative thoughts, too many negative thoughts:

  It was her duty to focus on the bright side of life.

  Who cared if she’d had affairs, lied to her friends,

  took money from the till or keyed the car doors

  of folks she disliked, wasn’t this human nature?

  After all, millions were clearly more sinful than she.

  So it stood to reason she’d be forgiven. But when

  a hawk snatched up a new friend, she understood

  why this spot meant giving birth to a constant

  supply of bunnies—a little eating, a little fucking,

  a little nap. No wonder her friends were jittery

  and their noses twitched; no wonder they were

  speedy runners with foxes and coyotes lurking

  in the underbrush. Eating, fucking, and napping,

  wasn’t it just self-medicating? So as she popped

  out litter after litter, she began to ask: When

  would it happen to her? When the fox’s teeth

  clamped vise-like on her neck or she heard

  the owl’s plunging rush of wings, would she

  then find herself in the fleecy clouds of Heaven—

  the hallelujahs, perpetual singing, the regular sex—

  or had she mistaken her location from the start

  and she’d come back as a spider, maybe a snake?

  Good Days

  Jack McCarthy, Stand-Up Poet, 1939–2013

  It had been one of those good days with friends

  and now we were sitting around the bonfire

  telling stories—a circle of light within the dark.

  The wind through the trees above us sounded

  like faraway conversations, perhaps the talk

  of friends around bonfires in the past. Some

  were drinking, some not. Some leaned back

  on their elbows, some sat cross-legged.

  You know how it is: your face grows hot,

  your back turns cold. As time passed, one

  by one, men and women got to their feet and

  walked into the night. Yes, that’s how it was.

  Part Two

  Sixteen Sonnets for Isabel

  Monochrome

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  it was September. Trees were green,

  now they turned brown; flowers dimmed;

  to rec
all their color seemed a mockery.

  This was the first of the changes, then came

  the slow shift to monochrome,

  as all of nature commenced to bleed out

  and take on the face of an overcast sky.

  Unaccountably, people kept walking around.

  They shopped; they partied. I called to them:

  Hide in your basements! Try to stay warm!

  Some laughed; some scratched their heads.

  Then I knew the world wasn’t broken;

  my eyes were broken.

  Song

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  is farther away than the fall of Rome

  and as close as the next second.

  It’s dread promise fills every moment.

  Birds mouth their songs; I hear no sound.

  The air is heavy; they can hardly fly.

  Everything is upside down. Sparrows

  and robins line up on the wires. Then one

  tumbles to the ground. Some days, I think,

  I’m only a half step from surrender. In Rome,

  songbirds’ tongues were a delicacy. Eating them,

  people mouthed their songs, hoping to sing,

  as I do now. Grunts, rasps, croaks, gasps:

  this isn’t their song; it’s my song.

  Technology

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  she and I changed from one statistic

  to another. Computers made the adjustment,

  hummed a little, then settled down again.

  The hum conveyed no misery or grief,

  which was a big step for us all, because

  formerly a clerk marking a sheet might

  recall his own familiar absences and blot

  his paper with a salty drop. How foolish

  life was in the old days. Technology makes

  it simpler; nasty events can be modified

  by smart machinery and nothing need be

  “hands on” anymore. With a single keystroke,

  the worrisome page again becomes virginal.

  Skyrocket

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  I tried to think it was a kind of hurrying-up,

  since, of course, our first breath after birth

  is the start of our dying. I told myself

  death is part of life. I was full of lies.

  I tried to put something between me

  and the fact of her illness: maybe a wall,

  maybe the obliteration of perception.

  Nothing worked. As the world got dimmer,

  her death grew brighter, nosier; it zigzagged

  about the house like a frantic rocket. That’s

  how it seemed. I wanted a little quiet

  for productive thought, but as time passed

  I knew it was best to keep my mind blank.

  Lizard

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  I thought, What about me? Then I grabbed

  the virtual hammer I always keep with me

  and whacked myself over the head.

  I was like a pup tent in Manhattan.

  I wasn’t the subject of the sentence;

  I wasn’t even in the sentence. A beer

  can bobbing in the ocean, that was me.

  Her illness eased its lizard body into our home,

  slid its vastness across chairs and left slime

  on the walls till nothing was familiar anymore.

  It’s red tongue flicked and we ran. My wife didn’t run.

  She tried to teach us acceptance. But we, as foolish

  as ever, wanted tools to fight it, not acceptance.

  Swap Shop

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  the knowledge became a leash clipped

  to my collar, a leash in the paw of her illness,

  which rose tall above me; and if I thought

  of a book, ball game, or chicken dinner,

  the leash would be given a sharp yank

  to show who was in charge, and whack me

  with the fact of her dying. I wore the leash

  all day; I wore it at work and when I slept;

  I wore it in the shower. A single step

  in the wrong direction put it in action

  and I’d be flat on my back. You know those

  dodgy trade-offs in swap shops? It was like that:

  all my thoughts traded for the one I dreaded.

  Alien Skin

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  I began to hear of her illness all over.

  People in carwashes and barbershops had it,

  friends, acquaintances, even enemies had it.

  On TV it was the topic of panel discussions;

  its name lurked at the foot of all conversations.

  I felt confused; it was as if these others existed

  to diminish my wife’s individual pain, as if

  her illness were less serious by being in a crowd.

  But we knew hers was the worst. All the family

  knew that. And what we knew was like a layer

  of alien skin and we scratched at its scaly presence.

  But it never bled, no matter how hard we scratched;

  rather, to mock our good health, it turned rosy.

  Pain

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  I thought of the interior pain of those

  who loved her, starting with me.

  But no x-ray machine would show it;

  pills, operations, nothing could prove it.

  The people who loved her would look

  perfectly healthy. I’m not really, I’d say,

  I’m really very sick. Ditto all the others.

  Perhaps we could hold up signs describing

  just where we hurt; or wrap ourselves

  in bloody bandages, use crutches and canes

  to explain the degree of our interior pain.

  Friends might guess my mountain of loss,

  but I’d buy ads on TV to tell strangers.

  Niagara Falls

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  I thought of all the words we’d never speak.

  Not just I love you or let’s go for a walk,

  but complaints and words from fights.

  How much I’d give to have her to tell me

  take out the garbage, pick up your books!

  I’d be eager to see her angry again; I’d accept

  any slight or defamation of character.

  But like the world on old maps, up ahead

  loomed a cataract. As at Niagara, folks

  with telescopes might watch us float by

  as we, in our barrel, bobbed toward it. How

  feeble is language! Where were the words

  to turn this to a story to make her laugh?

  The Wide Variety

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  I wanted to think it was somebody’s fault.

  Big business, chemical toxins or perhaps

  it was the fault of the man up the street.

  If that were the case, I’d give him a smack.

  But I had no one to blame; no one to punish.

  So what could I do with my anger? Could I

  hurl stones at the sky, polish my whimper?

  It’s depressing to have no one to blame,

  to sit beside her with no solution, nothing

  to fix. I needed villains, like demons in antique

  paintings plaguing a saint. But these days

  that wide variety is internalized: the vicious,

  good and malignant, all find a place within us.

  Skin

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  I touched the back of my hand gently

  to her cheek. How warm it felt.

  What will it be like when it’s not?

  To find out I took bags of green beans

  from the freezer, stuck my
finger

  in ice cream to feel the cold, but

  I couldn’t get the temperature right.

  But no, all that’s a lie. How paralyzing

  becomes bad news. I felt I knew exactly

  what her skin would be like. I couldn’t

  stop thinking about it. And whatever

  I guessed, it would be worse; and can I

  guess the color? There will be no color.

  Never

  The day I learned my wife was dying

  I went to read about volcanic eruptions,

  earthquakes, fire, bloody war, and murder.

  I wanted to discover the most awful, because

  I knew her death would be worse than that;

  and even crueler would be her absence, not

  for a day or a year. It meant not coming back.

  That was what I couldn’t imagine. How many

  days in Never? How many times would we

  hear a car and think, That’s her, or hear