peeled of its paper), the side.
I used short, quick, back-and-forth strokes
or long ones running in the same direction
or filled a circle from the center out
like the iris of an eye.
I applied greater pressure,
leaning heavy over my work,
or held my hand far away
and made bright or dark be faint.
There was the painstaking dotting-it-in,
there were curly hair strokes,
patches, zigzags, waves.
Members of my household
politely stepped over me.
The books were cheap and quiet.
One day an old friend of my mother’s
came to stay with us and reminisce.
I sprawled out on the floor at some remove
from wherever they sat to talk, stuck
like a far star is stuck to its constellation,
and I colored along,
drunk in my deductions . . .
One.) Vi could remember my mother
from a time before she had married.
Two.) Vi had never married anyone herself.
Three.) Vi was an artist.
Therefore, for all of the days of her visit
I listened to their talk
as if any other action on my part
would make it stop.
And when one morning the story did stop
and Vi broke in and said a thing
that seemed to me abrupt and unrelated,
There will be no more coloring books,
I looked up for a clue in her face.
After a pause the story simply resumed.
A package came for me from Kansas
a few weeks after that:
pastels and paints
and two sorts of paper, one slick,
one absorbent. And I spent them all,
imagining a life of it, one thick page
after another,
bottomless, bottomless.
Soon only a smudged assortment was left,
and so I slid out the coloring books
and turned to a page
that hadn’t been done
and began filling-in, no less satisfied
and no happier than before,
for the whole endeavor
was about texture,
more than we might suppose,
and less than we might imagine
a project of fantasy, autobiography, or wish.
The years have come,
and some few memories so slight
that they are hardly what they are.
They are agenda-less and dumb.
They don’t notice that I notice them.
Improvisation
or
The Bluebird of Happiness
A bluebird came to a post of the garden fence time and again last summer and, in doing so, brought disproportionate joy. It wasn’t a fencepost proper; it was one of seventeen six-foot poles rigged vertically as an extension to the chain-link fence to support a second, less substantial, tier. The bluebird preferred to perch on the pole mounted at a particular corner and reaching a greater height than the rest. Should that post become occupied by a second, less-frequently-visiting bluebird, the next-best option was apparently the pole mounted on the corner directly east of it, which had tilted a bit. I know there must be something sold at Lowe’s which might lend itself better to the beauty of the whole while at the same time making the fence appear higher to deer, but we already had a few of these poles lying around in the attic of the garage and so put them to use and bought the few more that were needed. It has taken all these years for the bluebirds to land on them. But then happiness is often discovered close by, even if on any given day it might not register as such.
It’s January now, and the temperatures in Iowa are about what you’d expect. Still, there’s reason to go out. Just yesterday, having emptied the compost bucket into one of the bins behind the garden and having made my way back up the hill to the house, I stood near the side door, staring blankly at the aluminum siding, listening. What I heard was a simple choral accompaniment to the squeak of the gas meter attached to the side of the house. I don’t know why the gas meter squeaks this way—the original one never did—but this replacement unit chirps at regular three-second intervals. I never spotted the bird and so can’t name the species, but that note was deliberate, woven in, repeated.
Deleted Poem
It was good, but
seemed not good enough.
