| To Hope Street
Where I grew, roads named for their distance
from the river: 6 mile, 7 mile, 8 mile –
and the solemnity of numbers showed
resistance to artifice. Where I live
are neighborhoods of streets named for precious
gems – ruby, sapphire, pearl – and flowers –
poppy, camellia, lilac – displays plush enough
to harbor a felon, should the getaway car
expire. Here, even stucco buds –
tax dollars at play. Usually, it seems like Hope
wends places deloused of such luxury,
the drag from East Origin to West Destiny,
towns with city councils that meet in holy
donut shops. Here, west means you’re going
toward the ocean and east means away, go back
from whence you came. I cannot go back
and neither can you. It does not exist –
those bustling Main Streets rusted over,
forlorn chassis in the Midwestern winter,
dead-ending into a field reclaimed by attitudes
of grass alongside a highway that pulled
a number so great it would surely be conscripted.
The dead and dying parade their nostalgia
down it wearing floats, risen above the fashioned
facts of memory. The street develops amnesia,
forgets its faults, dreams of asphalt patch.
Does lane aspire to avenue? Circle to thoroughfare?
I cannot help thinking that the street named hope
has something to offer. Something prophetic?
Something narcotic? I cannot help
thinking, though I can’t say it’s time well-spent.
Ignominious hope, pedestrian hope,
a street is defined by its bounds: two sides
to every story. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter”:
the billboard outside hell, according to the man
who layered hell like a taco salad. If it will
make you feel better, you can cry
on the shoulder of the road.
2nd of Tammuz
There are days that refuse to perform
calisthenics, defying the sun’s anesthesia, preferring
to dwell, to wallow in callow Self-
reflection. Were you Romantic, at your leisure
you’d locate a shallop and let the water
reiterate its measure, its phrase. You’d see Yourself
diffused, distracted from your woes
while your fingers briefly
cleaved the waves.
Were you current, you’d doubt a rare
mood so whole while the corporate personality
of god – vengeful random just – chose
which suit to wear.
God the potter landlord vintner – which hat now?
God the sovereign milliner.
Oh day that slaps the bastard hope, buries
the unguent, mocks origin dream desire
(intrepid Virgils)
you must be given your due, decrees God the snake-
maker, creator of daemon doubt to balance
the beatific. Will you question the divine
division of labor? You need not
heed – you’d not be the first.
Alas, Dame Wisdom took the day off
and tribal deities tire of dilettantes,
so don’t bother pillaging
Other Traditions. No intervening
angel today, no talisman or totem to guide you.
Where consolation meets
desolation, put your hand
to the latch. |