Echo
And since she could only say back what she heard,
she had to listen for what she needed to say.
She haunted the edges of schoolyards first. Not it.
Lovers’ lanes: hopeless. Cell phones seemed promising,
but really. She started reading novels
to put herself in the way of secret lives. It was the old story,
speed that was made to be followed, not repeated:
she remembered the ends of sentences, of sentences.
Why hasn’t anyone said…? she thought, but couldn’t say it.
What I want is… lilies in time-lapse bloomed, faces, explosions,
which she tried repeating. Stares, curious at least.
And if it had never in all history been uttered
would accident help her? She tried mishearing
flags snapping in darkness, the rumble of subways,
misquoting the birds even, two-wit, twang-a-wire, sorry-sorry.
Not quite, but there was something deep within them:
hadn’t it been there at the world’s beginning,
a silence? Yes, she could hear it still. It was like,
like a dumbstruck boy who looked at her as blankly
as if she were a pool, or he was, it was a question
spreading out larger and smoother, time itself,
to which she could hardly wait to hear her answer.
Bit Parts
In that monster epic of the checkout girl
I’m the guy setting groceries on the belt
in order of decreasing density, or maybe the one
whose Did you get that coupon? is the last straw,
so she streams out, shedding her smock, through automatic doors.
In that later movie of the two old friends
stopped dead in the whitewater of the crowd
with sudden love, I’m the Excuse me sidestepping them,
or the waiter they hardly see, clacking down two plates
with tolerant amusement, which is my specialty.
And in the film of the autumnal Liebestod,
I’m the guy sliding her the desperate ticket,
the arm hailing a taxi against the sunset,
the blink of a bike going by. If you notice me at all
you never ask Who is that? just
What else was he in? since I am small, and they
are large, these lovers, comets, and so swift,
fast-forwarding their whole lives in two hours,
hair blown back, that their whispers, stooping to us,
would be sonic booms, their hot touch catastrophic.
I sit, hand on your arm, as the Wave of the Century,
some poor lifeboat poised on its crest
like a sparrow lost in the whited-out sky,
collapses, a terrible powder of light
against the screen, roaring, leaving us dry.
I’m the abrupt laugh, or the back of a dark coat
up which, like rain on a windshield, climb the credits.
I am that faint curve graphed on the sand
in wrack and paper cups and foam that shows,
as the light comes up, how far the night had risen.
The God Who
It was the small gods we talked to
before words, though soon enough
we forgot, and sadly, that what dawn
or the shine of hips made the heart do
was prayer.
The god of a particular
slow bend in the river, his friend
god of the white boats swung around it,
gods of moderately impressive rocks,
of spots warm where someone was just sitting,
of the deep sharp scents of shoes, of sounds
whose direction is unclear, of silver linings:
they appreciated whatever small appreciations
came their way and, ignored,
were not so much vengeful
as doubtful in that early world,
where the workload, if it can be called that,
of their divinely inefficient bureaucracy,
left plenty of time to enjoy the specialties
of their fellows, god of just sitting around,
god of the nasty slider, of low-battery gleeps,
of wine that gets better by the glass,
the god (the high god!) of too excited to sleep.
Actually, with considerable power
over one thing, or a couple—a book maybe,
tennis, unusual salads—but only average
at, say, getting lovers or starting a car,
they were a lot like us. Distinctions, in fact,
were not rigidly maintained, it being proverbially
difficult to be sure you’re immortal
or that you’re not. There was intermarriage,
bargaining, and respectful confusion (once
language got going)
about what constituted worship
and what was just delighted
saying of the names of things,
which persists. So as for the god
of the squeak of clean hair,
of your hand out the car window
wind-lifted, of the small shades under hat brims
and not excluding
the banned gods of leaf-fires and tobacco,
oh and definitely including
she of the coffee-breath and fine cold hands
who says Sit down friend and let’s see,
let’s just see, and certainly
my other god, he of Least Resistance
who decrees what is going to happen anyway,
who listens only to prayers that end
Let all be as Thou will’st, who grants
only my wish to believe in him,
and with the possible exception only of the god of making a list
of all the other