2000 Deciduous Trees : Memories of a Zine (9781937316051) (15 page)

What emotional rescue? Saviors
are an impossibility. There is too much physical to get across when
one looks west toward one's sister. My feet are here on a place
cold enough to hate.

And then that place becomes a place six
inches in front of my feet and that place turns into the foundation
of a house across the street that I'm looking at while I'm with her
on the phone.

And that place becomes a backyard and an
alley and footsteps and spring and fall and someone wishing for a
better car and going the wrong way on a one-way street and across
another new state again.

And then that land pulls away faster toward
her feet. Toward the ocean. Toward a bigger sky. Toward the west.
And here I am, on the phone, with my hand pressing against the cold
window, hating her too-far-away-to-reach tears. Again.

DEFINITIVE
ARTICLE

I’m looking at a sticky ring of dry soda
where a glass was last week. Sweet soft white cat hair is anchored
in it and static electricity has caused all the hair to point in
the same direction. The mess of my life has gathered itself in
imitation of a forgotten feather. 

Art, dear art, starts somewhere between the
stars and I. And returns again to the past by way of a stranger's
eye.

For several years I have been considering
the meaning of art. The meaning of art in life. The meaning of art
in my life. The meaning of art in culture. The definition of
culture through art. The destruction of culture by art. The place
of God in art. Art as worship of God. Art as a replacement for God.
Art as self-expression. Whether or not art can be self-expression
or whether it can only be reflection requiring substantial context.
And whether that reflection is self-reflection or reflection of
culture. And if it is only reflection of culture, then what is the
role of representation and how extensive is the effect of the
artist as a filter for culture? And vice versa. On and on. And
etceteras.

Art is this incessant day of getting up and
beginning again. Art is that crazed wild beast you find wounded in
the woods. Shrieking in pain. Violent and angry. Helpless. Dying.
And you do not have to choose to help it. It is wise not to help
it. There are those people who reach out to the beast with bread or
water or a salve for the pain. And some of those people perish. At
the same time there are those people who catch the beast from
behind and beat it senseless, prostrate. And some of those people
think they have done a good thing.

Other people let the thing die, laugh as if
they have controlled the pain, and collect remnants of the beast to
decorate their offices, ears, and anecdotal histories.

And there are some people who sit out of the
way, watching. They wait, patiently, until the beast sleeps. And
then, only then, do they approach the animal. They study it. Find
its strengths. And see what has happened to weaken it. And some of
those people, the bravest and perhaps the most crazed, stand ready
as the beast wakes.

And when the beast rises in anger those
people rise too. They assume the strengths of the beast. They
pretend the power. They hope the trick works. And the beast tires
in its confusion. The people rest. And again they watch. Soon the
beast is cleaning its wounds. And the people, those brave sweet
souls, do not smile at the beast. They do not even pretend to
understand the pain. Instead they lock eyes with the thing. They
see the beast's blood. They feel death imminent and still they
stare and inflict upon themselves a comparable wound. The beast has
no compassion for those people. And those people may very well die
as the beast takes advantage of their weakness.

But for the few who survive and return there
can be great things. Because the beast, once it has healed and
waited for the human to heal, knows all the best places to lie in
the sun. And the beast knows all the soft mossy beds where a nap is
required. The beast knows the fish, and the honey, and the meat,
and the warmth under the snow. And the human will call these things
his or her own only by watching.

And an artist is, perhaps, the dying. The
artist is spread out thin close to the ground to catch the dying.
Cushioning the leaves’ fall. Blessing the fish's grave. Listening
to the wind tell the last words of the dry fall corn. This is the
artist. Not God but a man of God, blessing the death that will only
just precede renewal. Holding the hands of salmon streams bubbling
with the turbulence of an exfoliating thousand gasping gills.

And all immortalized. Marked with a
tombstone. Poems. Paintings. Music. Sculpture. Sketches. Recording
it all. Remembering at all. Forgetting nothing. Abandoning no
one.

Add the mama rabbit close to death in the
snow. She becomes soil willingly, hearing the artist's somber
footsteps passing her grave.

And he walks quietly over them all, then,
tamping them down, watching them submit to fate, and nodding over
and over in comfort,”Yes, you have lived your life. No, I will not
forget you. Yes, I will tell them. Yes, I promise to tell
them."

So in a way the artist does not suffer. He
is the friend who grants the dying wish. He is the messenger from
one life to another. He is the caretaker of a being's most precious
memory.

The artist is there in the spring too. But
no one needs him then when the winds and rain, so drunk and
spinning and brawling are knocking each other down with their rent
tree trunks and broken branches and walls of huge gale-force
reincarnation.

Then the artist is ignored. Life is new and
strong and needs no reminding, no validation, no hand to hold
through anxious bitter nights of unknowing. Worthless, unnecessary,
dismissed and forgotten, he must even take shelter from their gay
happenings. But as the spring dies, he is called again. Summoned.
Not by people but by the sky. Spring implores the artist to record
those valiant violent nights, the surges of which only one season
is capable.

Spring demands, “Tell them
how the wind howled at the greatness of Green and how Green smacked
him right there in front of all of us. Remember? Fucking hell. So
wasted. Do you remember? Then
crack.
Bam.
Right in front of me, too.”

And the artist always remembers.

And Springtime holds tight and chokes on his
laughter remembering The Purple and The Black and so many of
Green's stupid jokes. And how they all had so much fun together
with The Wet. "Tell them that, sir. Tell them that. They'll listen
to you. They have to."

There is a place where you can hear a slough
sloshing and breezes bending the grass. Countless plants grow there
but nothing is more lush than one tall reed. Green grows only from
its own source; not like Black and Rain, neither of which is bound.
Theirs is a fatal imprudence where no cause, no choice, might ever
be made. Black is so much of this slough’s everything: the mud, the
water, the tree trunks where they are wet, and of course the night.
And Rain? From April until June, Rain resents his inevitable making
of Black. Rain exists in self-contempt, unable to stop himself from
creating his rival. Both Rain and Black want time with Green.

Green just wants to play.

But Rain loves her, truly. When he falls
upon her she shivers, shudders, bounces, and bends. If only Rain
could stop time, could keep from slipping down off her fronds and
becoming part of Black. He’s only with her intense beauty for an
instant, never long, never enough time for real passion like she
makes with Black.

But Rain isn’t a martyr: not a matchmaker
either. He cannot figure out how to keep her for himself and
wishes, so impossibly, that time could stop in those gravitational
moments when he just barely falls onto her supple yielding.

Time never stops.

Black hates to see Green playing with Rain’s
love. He’s serious and gets irritated with their meaning and
messing around. Black wants to be the sky so he can push the clouds
along to get that falling shower away from her. He doesn’t want to
be earthbound. So he rises supreme and makes a totalitarian
takeover of the night. Black is the sky, ready to hold back the
Rain, to dominate everything, even Green. So. There’s no color. He
loses everything to his consumption and misses her so completely as
he pushes Rain away. It is devastating to see none of her
brightness, to see only himself extending sky to mud.

She must be there. He can’t understand it.
She was right there. And there. And there. And over there. She was
everywhere for entire days.

While the Black night bides his time,
searching, Rain comes back falling for no reason, bouncing off what
might or might not be his truest love.

Exhausted from the domination and the
search, Black gives up the sky.

So Rain and spring Green arise together,
growing bold. Such a love is not sweetness. To envy it is foolish.
They are so temporary. There will be none of their constant spring
touches in the baking dried-out most concrete parts of summer. But.
For a few months, up until June, the Rain makes more and more
attempts for her and so makes more and more of the Black.

What choice does Green have when she looks
at them both? The Rain is so bashful and Black is so boorish. Here
in the wet spring Green is not bashful. She is defiant and charges
all eyes, demanding the most loud roaring praise, which Rain’s
thunderstorm gladly obliges.

Black ignores her as much as he can.

And Green knows he’s watching, knows how
much he hates the Rain touching her. She pulls no punches, says,
“Look at me against that gray-purple Rain cloud.” If it's windy,
then Green says, “Watch. I'm silver powder one side and then Rain
flipped me back over to shiny wet leaves.”

Black will not dominate now. He can’t risk
losing her again. So he lets her punish him with the jealousy he
refuses to admit.

Meanwhile Rain is good to Green. And they
look good together. Green is perfect against the falling down that
Rain makes of fields, tree trunks, and ditches.

But Green isn’t just one tall reed standing
in a Black and Rain slough. She is ferns near the road and a new
forest full of leaves.

Housewife wildflowers beaten to violent
purple and black-eyed gold and the white sky after the Rain runs
off all suspect wet Green and deep Black of a heedless immoral
affair. Even the age-old sky understands and is winking with her
burning ember racing clouds. Those others know it’s not love but
necessity. So Green and Black are young again. So what? They’ve all
shared pride and a terribly tyranny of heart.

And it’s not all impassioned fight and
flight. Sleek Black shows the lily Green her graceful reflection
once a year, and Black ripples when the right breeze lets Green run
a forgetful grassy tip along his stream spine. She whispers
reminders of her reflected daylight into Black’s deepest lack of
light. And Black protects her. Not her innocence. Not her life. But
he wraps himself, night again, around the place where her growing
tall, growing up straight, growing higher, fell over finally. He
rests with her there where the same gravity that constantly takes
Rain away along that same bent frond. Rain cannot do for her what
Black does with his so sure surrounding.

He’s always there for her. More than love.
More than anything. There forever, for her.

But Black grays into August’s concrete,
turns dormant land to slippery sloughs, and stops running in such
high contrast through tall spring Green’s provocative fronds.

Black waits with the colorful rocks, once
under finger-deep water, who are feeling abandoned too. Summer,
fall, and winter, he knows, or hopes so strong it feels knowing,
she will come back to him forever in spring.

HE
ASKED ME HOW TO LIGHT UP LOVE

He asked me how to light up love. And I
wondered. You mean set it on fire? Burn it? Cast shadows with it?
Display it? Catch it in the dark? Look right at it for what it is?
Welcome it? Expose it? Guide its way? Find proof of it? Give it
contrast? Interrogate it? Warm it? Nurture it to grow? Protect it?
Energize it? How do you want me to light up love? And then it was
gone. So he said to me instead, who are you, really? And I knew. I
am the water for Narcissus.

IN A TURQUOISE
TANK-TOP

I saw a man.

A black man

in a turquoise tank-top, in

a clapboard neighborhood’s

cheap backyard garden.

So many cheap

backyards will grow

guarded along anything

by the tracks on a Sunday

watch into the city.

Weeds and buckets and tires

screaming laugh/cries

and shoes and tipped-over

tricycles fatigue-faded

with the weight of too many

children, too fast and furious

inside the fences.

But his backyard

garden, alone and careful

and neat, did not

just happen

in any messy

neighborhood blur.