Red Cedar Review

love at the Egyptian theatre

POEMS BY BARBARA DRAKE
POEMS BY BARBARA DRAKE



LOVE AT THE

EGYPTIAN THEATRE

Barbara Drake

Red Cedar Press 
East Lansing 1978


Some of these poems have appeared in the 
following periodicals: Red Cedar Review, Three 
Rivers Poetry Journal, Wormwood Review, Sumac, 
Centennial Review, Michigan Hot Apples, 
Northwest Review, Green House, Colorado 
Quarterly, Marrow, The Lansing Star, Green 
River Review, Hanging Loose.

Cover by David Kirkpatrick

Red Cedar Press/Review

English Department 
Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824 
(517) 355-9656

Copyright © Barbara Drake 1978

Library of Congress Catalog No. 78-50183


Preface

Look for her voice. It is an old-young voice, having both 
freshness and wisdom. The voice of a girl born in Kansas 
and, like Dorothy, destined to explore a more exotic world.

The voice is western, mid-western in its flatness through 
which a thread of melody, sweet observation, moves 
literally, relentlessly. The intellect is homely; it is swift and 
it is literal. I think it is American poetry, completely 
liberated from centuries of European culture and complete 
to speak autonomously.

I could be speaking about much of the New Poetry. No 
longer in thrall to English literature; no longer wanting to 
expatriate itself in European cities; no longer produced by 
a homogeneous education grounded in the classics. But I 
am speaking of Barbara Drake's deceptively simple, lovingly 
wise and sweetly melodic American poems.

She is a master of transforming the everyday (American) 
into a music that only those with the New Ears will be able 
to hear. She is strong and inventive and bold, and daring 
enough to write without excuses or sleight of hand. Once 
you have heard her voice it will haunt you. You will never 
go to a movie, a supermarket, your kitchen, or a bus station 
without hearing or wanting to hear her plain, insistent voice 
clarifying and focusing the American scene for you. She is 
already inside your secret love of paper, your erotic reaction 
to the plush seat at the cinema, and your inventive 
daily play with the language.

The first poem in the collection, "Imperfect Prisms," 
creates a paradigm of her poetic process which will intrigue 
and perhaps even obsess you when you discover it. She 
does know how to look at the world through many different 
lenses, and though she knows how the spectrum breaks 
down normally, she simply asks you, as you are seeing the 
light broken into a rainbow which possibly does not display 

iii


this proper order, to look with excitement beyond that 
order to how much beauty is there. Even in this plain, mundane 
world, she makes her pure American declaration:

I'd do it again.

It was worth the price —

getting seven

apparently perfect rainbows

from seven

allegedly imperfect 
prisms.

Her poetry is one of acceptance and finally of rejoicing in 
the act of acceptance as that act overcomes imperfection. 
It is also the poetry of that great American dream —to do it 
oneself. To make things. To make things better. To understand 
them as a way of making them more complete. At the 
end of "Talking To A Tree" she says,

This morning,

drinking my coffee in the tree-green light,

I told it, "Okay tree, I get the message. 
Thirty-five myself and still —

I've got to grow.

Just give me room."

I do think if you let her voice into your head, it will pervade 
you. I think that voice is clear and strong, melodically 
simple and strange, and if you give it room, it will take up a 
very big space.

Diane Wakoski

East Lansing 
1978

iv


For my family, 
especially my parents, 
Monica and Ward Robertson, 
and my husband,

Albert Drake.

v


Contents

Imperfect Prisms........................................................................... 1

Garbage......................................................................................... 2

The Mouse..................................................................................... 4

Lecture on the Heart.................................................................... 6

Listen, Doctor............................................................................... 9

The Ancestors.................................................................................11

The Woman Gets Restless.............................................................12

Old Folk Tale...................................................................................13

She Dreams Herself Titanic...........................................................14

Earthquakes.....................................................................................15

Magic Children..............................................................................16

Love at the Egyptian Theatre.........................................................17

Moss's Dream.................................................................................19

Reading Grun's Timetables of History..........................................20

Good Friends and First Impressions..............................................23

Amelia.............................................................................................25

1963, November 22........................................................................26

Games.............................................................................................29

What a Relief...................................................................................30

The Man Who Invented One.........................................................31

Identifying Animals........................................................................32

Bus Fare...........................................................................................33

Portable Sherwood Anderson.......................................................34

Long Distance................................................................................37

Travelers.........................................................................................39

Here We Are..................................................................................40

Talking With a Tree........................................................................43

Field Poems.....................................................................................45

Roses Are Heavy Feeders...............................................................51

In the End of March........................................................................52

She Hopes This Is Not the Beginning............................................54

Dreams About Teeth......................................................................56

How Was It?.....................................................................................60

Knowledge.....................................................................................62

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IMPERFECT PRISMS

They were having a sale 
on imperfect prisms.

What's wrong with them? I asked, 
Imperfect, said the salesman.

They looked fine to me.

I'm not perfect.

So I bought seven

and took them home in a box, 
like hamsters 
or a carton of fish, 
and placed them in a row 
on my east windowsill.

Then I went to bed in the dark.

Next morning

it was like when your dog 
has puppies.

The white ceiling 
wavered with young rainbows.

Prisms are pretty, you know, 
but sharp. All

that morning, light 
kept falling into the prisms, 
breaking

and getting color 
on my clothes and on my face.

I had my hands full.

I'd do it again.

It was worth the price - 
getting seven 
apparently perfect rainbows 
from seven 
allegedly imperfect 
prisms.

1


GARBAGE

Watch out for the ones who insist 
everything counts for something 
and won't throw anything away.

They will bring you their used objects 
which are never new cars or extra refrigerators 
but are always stained baby clothes 
or pickles that were canned by dead relatives.

They make clorox bottles into bird feeders 
and popsicle sticks into Christmas decorations. 
What optimists.

There will never be 
that many birds or Christmases.

Still, it's their business 
if their garages glisten with mayonnaise jars 
or their highest cupboards harbor 
unworthy bits of last year's cereal.

It's just when they want 
to unload things on me 
that I must speak up about garbage: 
garbage, like guilt, is real.

I've got my own cupboard full 
of old wool coats for a rug someday.

I've got a t.v. set 
with voices and no pictures, 
but / admit, it doesn't add up. 
And I accept 
that my best old wine bottles, 
amber or green or clear, 
may never again be anything but empty.

Even the two sides of one face 
don't match exactly 
because this material world 
is much more complicated 
than some people 
would have you believe.

2


So let them keep their old children's board games 
with several essential pieces missing.

If suffering brings them grace 
or someone offers to buy 
their twenty acres of used automobile tires 
for a million dollars,

I'll offer my congratulations

but I won't, I won't, I won't

go looking

for old tires

or empty mayonnaise jars

or suffering.

3


THE MOUSE

I went to the kitchen early 
one cool, spring morning, 
past all of the others sleeping, 
and warm in the tent 
of my long flannel gown. 
Bare feet on cold floors 
remembered other morning floors.

The dim light came 
like a breeze, sideways 
through plants on the windowsill: 
through orange and tangerine leaves 
and the blunt avocado, through 
spiney rosemary, and the fuschias 
sprouted from four inch slips 
carried halfway across the country. 
It was a kind of kitchen forest 
where I reached for the kettle 
to brew my morning coffee.

And then I saw the cat, 
the tortoiseshell mother cat 
crouched staring into a crevice 
between cupboard and stove. 
Kneeling, I looked my way 
into the dark crevice 
and saw a mouse 
transfixed by the cat's stare.

To study the mouse, the situation,

I placed my hands on the cat 
and could feel her purr rise 
with pleasure in this mouse.

It was a small mouse, 
darker than the dust mice 
I sweep from under the beds, 

4


the white diaper of its underbelly 
showing at the edges 
of its blue grey pelt.

Its ears were soft and veined 
as petals on spring violets.

Its boney feet were pink and 
its whiskers were like 
the bristles on a good brush.

I could imagine the string of its tail 
dressed lightly across the knuckles of my hand, 
if I were to catch it and teach it 
to sit in my cupped palm 
as I fed it small, parched corn 
or a sliver of grape.

And since I was mother here 
there would be no mother 
to tell me whether or not 
I might keep it. It was 
all up to me.

Then I felt a tremor in the cat 
and knew the moment had come 
when the mouse would run 
for safety under the sink.

And I thought of glasses and silver, 
and fresh bread on the shelves, 
and I thought of a mouse nest in the wall 
woven round with the down of my towels, 
and I thought of: 
mouse tracks in the sugar, 
mouse tracks in the flour, 
the ravenous eyes of the mouse.

And I let 
the cat 
go.

5


LECTURE ON THE HEART

Let's understand, 
a heart is something like a pill. 
You swallow it, 
it beats away, a timed capsule 
without which you're just a shell, 
looks nothing like a valentine. 
A valentine heart is probably something sexual 
dressed up in daddy's clothes, a male 
genital disguised for mailing;

upside down, a Victorian lady's ass 
pinched at the waist, and so on. 
Or maybe it's one of those 
linguistic mistakes, in fact a hearth 
which might in turn have been a sort of grate 
the Anglo Saxons used for roasting a haunch of venison 
on the first day birds returned in spring 
which is supposedly, Saint Valentine's day.

It's important not to confuse the real 
with the imaginary and superficial, 
such as red paper sentiments bordered by 
good white intentions with holes in them 
(probably made of scraps). A real heart 
is more like a bloody radish, 
crisp and hot and edible, 
a fist-like muscle in the warm body, 
always slightly off center in people. 
In fact, Saint Valentine himself 
also had nothing to do 
with hearts or love or birds;

a Christian martyr of the third century, St. Val 
sits next to Saint Vitus in the dictionary.

Saint Vitus, that's my patron, 
a funny old uncle who taught me how to dance, 
lit fireworks in the ganglia after dark, 
forbid me one whole year to play in the heart, 
as if it were a dangerous city park.

6


The heart is more like a room, actually.

I walked inside the one

at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 
a heart big as the museum bathroom.

I peered down the left ventricle, 
and I peered down the right ventricle, 
an irrelevant clot with a camera on my neck, 
till the children pulled me through 
and we went on to the lungs, 
the clean white lungs of plastic 
and the brown ones of the man who died smoking - 
poor tarry paper bags

like wasp nests in their glass case. 
On the other hand, I remember 
the smallest heart I've ever seen 
was the one that my friend Billy cut 
out of the swallow he'd shot;

he put it on a blue plate, along with the liver, 
for his sick yellow cat.

The cat would not eat, 
continued to puke and die.

That day his mother was making sour cream fudge 
which she poured to cool on a slab 
of black and white veined marble.

Little bird hearts

make repulsive candy, 
and I'd rather make soup 
of my old valentines, simmer them 
till the cupids like onions are soft 
and the small hearts float to the top and burst, 
which is how you know when hearts are done. 
They pop.

No, that's a lie,

and I promised to tell it straight.

That hearts break is purely mythical.

They just get stopped 
or go limp and soft 
like old leaky hot water bottles.

Unlike the famous woman fashion designer

7


whose lover shaved her pubic hair

in the shape of a valentine heart,

we will remember what the heart really is.

The heart is not genital.

It is not a public bathroom.

It is not made of paper or fudge or bird feathers.

The heart is not a martyr or a rare disease.

The heart, the heart, the heart

is a muscle.

8


LISTEN, DOCTOR

Listen, doctor,

all my life

I've had this thing for paper.

Do you think it's serious?

My mouth begins to water

in printers' shops.

As a little girl

I wanted to have

more rainbow tablets than anybody.

We didn't have much money

so I used to stand

outside the windows of art stores 
looking at those expensive blocks 
of watercolor paper, the kind 
you wet and lift with a razor.

To me, real class is still watercolor paper.

My husband complains 
when we go on vacation

I pack half the bags with paper; 
notebooks, sketchbooks. . .

but I won't get caught in the sticks 
without a tablet.

You should see my origami.

The lime is especially choice, and the red. 
I've had this stash of origami papers 
for years in the back of my desk, 
in case of another world war.

Of course I discriminate.

Napkins, tissue —these are so-so. 
Gift wrap is cute but dull.

Copy paper's bitter, squeaks 
when you touch it, a modern 
hysterical kind of paper I don't care for. 
Kraft paper sacks are comfortable.

I've got a closetful.

9


Newsprint, lined and unlined, 
has tooth and takes a soft pencil.

Often, when going for something simple 
like a magazine, or sandwich bags,

I find myself buying a ream 
of 20 lb. bond I don't really need.

Those blank sheets in a good stiff box 
turn me on. Doctor, I need to know, 
am I normal?

10


THE ANCESTORS

In those days 
we lived in a cave.

We scraped the walls 
pursuing fleas.

Our monkey feet 
pattered down halls 
blue as arteries.

We lit fires 
and learned burning.

We killed a lot, 
sometimes each other. 
We knew only that self 
ends at the skin, 
and continual hunger. 
Our children 
grew up and up 
until they were out 
of sight.

We never let 
our neighbors in.

Now, covered with vines, 
we breathe as little 
as possible.

No one believes 
we are still alive.

11


THE WOMAN GETS RESTLESS

The woman gets restless 
as the supper on the stove 
is nearing completion.

Her fork tests a potato, 
breaks a bit of meat, 
salts the green vegetable.

Before the set but unsurrounded table 
she stands in an empty house 
listening for the sound of a car.

Whoever you are, 
if you come at this time 
she will feed you.

12


OLD FOLK TALE

One night

as I lay by my husband and he 
was asleep

I heard a voice cry,

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, 
let down your golden hair.

I rose and went to the window 
and there far below was a man 
in a fancy dress suit 
of crimson and jet velvet.

Now my own hair is short and black 
so I threw him the end

of the bedspread (yellow chenille), 
and hand over hand he climbed 
until I could smell his breath 
like creme de menthe 
and hear the jingle of his spurs.

You're imagining this,

I told myself, so

just as his hand crept over the sill, 
Rapunzel is dead,

I whispered. Take me!

But he dropped to his horse 
like an old movie cowboy 
and fled.

13


SHE DREAMS HERSELF TITANIC

She dreams herself titanic 
like the boat 
that could not sink 
but did not float, 
and in her ears 
what he lusts for, 
crystal chandeliers.

Again the jewelled 
iceberg tears, 
again the waters pour, 
again the voice of ice, 
I'll ride you 
to the velvet floor.

She wakes at dawn, 
nine hundred miles from shore, 
submerged and calm.

14


EARTHQUAKES

My eleven year old daughter is practicing 
her school report on earthquakes.

Recitation of high catastrophe 
shakes the late Sunday 
living room.

She says

there are 100,000 earthquakes or more 
every year, 10 major ones;

100 destructive shocks, 1,000 damaging 
shocks, 10,000 strong shocks and 
1,000,000 little shocks.

Still, she goes on,

a trace of smugness in her clear voice 
at having finished 
this disastrous report 
with such long, even numbers 
and stretching it all out 
to the required number of pages. 
There is not even a tremor in her saying 
13 million people have been killed 
in earthquakes during the last 4,000 years. 
More than one-point-five-million people 
have been killed in just ten earthquakes 
in the last 1,000 years. In 1923 
an earthquake destroyed fifty per cent of Tokyo. 
In Fukui, Japan, in 1948, the ground 
opened and swallowed a woman 
up to her neck; a cow also 
was swallowed up to its neck.

(This is her required specific example.)

Outside our window

that crooked shadow of the apple tree 
seems a black crevice opening in the snowy yard. 
Callous little daughter, patching 
your school report together, three pages 
are not enough. The earth has swallowed 
more than that.

15


MAGIC CHILDREN

My children, you grow so, 
you make me feel like a joke, 
a tiny car a lot of clowns 
climb out of.

How you multiply, 
from none to three.

Your father and I must be 
an old vaudeville act, 
and life is quicker than the eye.

Rabbits, red and yellow scarves, 
fountains of paper flowers 
spring from you.

Doves disappear 
in velvet curtains 
of your hair.

Oh, my magic children —

you saw me in two, 
are my bed of nails, 
the burning coals I walk through, 
proof against wounds.

Loves, how shall I tell you 
what I feel?

Like fans of cards, 
eternal and unreal, 
we must all fold back 
into our own illusions.

16


LOVE AT THE EGYPTIAN THEATRE

Your father drives you 
to the Egyptian theatre 
and leaves you in front of 
the dog-man-cat 
which sits with its hands 
on its giant lap 
protecting the girl 
in the lighted glass. 
She takes your money 
and gives you paper.

The movie is good 
with three cartoons 
and it's almost the end 
when Buddy, your brother, 
has to go to the bathroom, 
so you stay in your seat. 
You forget about Buddy 
at the beginning 
of the second feature.

It's good too.

After a while, 
eating your jujubes, 
tonguing their clear, dark colors, 
and rocking your butt 
back and forth on the seat, 
you wish you'd gone 
to the bathroom 
when Buddy did, 
but you stay — 
for the whole second feature. 
Then you watch 
the first one over.

When the movies stop 
and the lights go on 
in the Egyptian sconces 

17


with serpents and birds 
on the ochre walls, 
the music marches you 
up the ramp of the aisles. 
You're the last one out.

Behind you 
the seats fill up 
with shadows.

It was light when you got here. 
It's dark out now 
and the glass is dark 
and the girl is gone.

You hug the theatre, 
leaning on the posters.

A car goes past.

It's sort of like your father's car 
but it goes on by.

You wonder where Buddy went. 
It starts to rain,

halfway snow that turns to rain. 
Another car slows down

but it doesn't stop 
and it doesn't look 
like your father's car.

Then no cars come 
and no one sees you 
but the cat-man-dog, 
the dog-man-cat.

And there is no love 
at the Egyptian theatre.

18


MOSS'S DREAM

AND A LULLABY FOR A SEVEN YEAR OLD BOY

He said he dreamed there was a store.

When you went into the store you grew old, 
and when you came out you became young again.

I asked him why this frightened him. He said, 
he had gone into the store and it closed 
before he got out.

There, baby, there.

Come into bed between mother and daddy, 
to the warm center like a beating heart.

You are seven years old 
and it's almost dawn.

There's no such place,

no such store, there is no store.

Say: there's no such place.

19


READING GRUN'S TIMETABLES OF HISTORY

I like the simplicity of the early years.

In 791 A.D.,for example, nothing happened 
except that the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine, 
put his cruel mother in prison.

That was the year before 
the Vikings conquered Ireland.

You can see the obvious patterns.

No one will convince me it was an accident 
that in the year 1000 (when Beowulf was written) 
an Indian mathematician, Sridhara, 
suddenly recognized the importance of zero, 
and there was

"a widespread fear 
of the end of the world 
and the Last Judgment." 
Up until that time 
they hadn't had a real zero year. 
Minus four, after all, 
was the "probable birth of Christ." 
The next fifty 
were skipped over rather quickly. 
People who lived and died in those years 
saw the crucifixion, 
heard "The first definite reference to diamonds," 
and (if they were Romans)

"learned the use of soap from the Gauls."

Soap, diamonds, and crucifixions.

You understand what I mean.

And in 900,

the year in which

"Farces make their first appearance," 
what then? Well,

"Castles become

the seats of the European nobility."

20


And I believe 
there must be a definite connection 
between the abandonment of the bow 
as a weapon of war 
by the English army in 1595 
and the appearance of heels 
on shoes, that same year.

In 1596, just before water closets were invented 
"by Sir John Harrington, courtier and author," 
Sir Francis Drake died.

To have died just before 
the invention of the toilet! Well, 
perhaps it seems more significant 
from our historical perspective 
but leave it to a writer 
to invent them.

But now you've got my point, 
for personal and egotistical reasons 
let's skip some, to the year 1939, 
when I was born and my husband-to-be 
was four years old.

Yeats had just died.

This gives me the empty feeling

of racing into a station 
just as a train pulls out 
carrying an eminent and beloved person 
who will never again be seen alive.

The station smells of steam and hot metal, 
of wet wool and babies' diapers.

Over the noise of the engine 
faint voices are singing "Lili Marlene." 
In a nearby theatre, other voices are singing, 
"Somewhere over the rainbow." 
Italy invades Albania.

Roosevelt demands assurances 
from Hitler and Mussolini.

Steinbeck wins a Pulitzer for Grapes of Wrath. 
Gone With The Wind takes the Academy Awards. 
William O. Douglas is named to the Supreme Court. 

21


It is partly a matter of detail, 
partly a matter of seeing 
in retrospect the patterns 
that were already there 
even before the event 
that makes it at once so clear 
and increasingly confusing.

I expect it to get more so 
before the year 2000.

April 13, 1976

22


GOOD FRIENDS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I got a sunburn on my ass today, you said,

and flipping your tennis skirt

like an east coast can-can girl

you gave the party a peek. It was red.

If I hadn't known you better I'd have thought, 
uh uh, look out for that one.

But I don't think that way any more.

At another party, ten years ago at least, 
when I met you the first time, 
you reminded me of a Captain Easy lady.

Your legs were curvy

the way they looked in comic strips in 1940.

You looked energetic enough

to jump aboard a passing Chinese junk

or wave from the deck of an aircraft carrier

at Easy flying by.

But you'd a baby in the car, and we were all

too poor to be adventurers. Women don't like me, 
you said. Too much hair and lipstick.

But I liked you a lot. I'd see you pass our house 
with the plaid stamp buggy full of bags and the baby. 
You'd walk reading a Vogue or Cosmopolitan, such 
other-than-grad-school worldly stuff, with a pint of Ripple, 
red or white, in a paper sack.

You'd take a sip, push the buggy a few steps 
and read of Jackie, whom someone told you 
you resembled. Giving the baby a slice 
of Wonder bread white as an angel, you'd stop, 
offer me a snort from the bottle.

You've always been one of my most generous 
and unsanitary friends.

Well, that's how you looked to me then.

Also: behind the hedge in your yard painting 
enormous self-portraits. I thought

23


you were trying to find your own face 
when all the rest of us dealt in words.

Or you, pulling something from a wrinkled

Goodwill sack and saying in your New England voice 
that sounded foreign on our West coast,

/ found this lovely gown today.

In the hospital, after my daughter was born 
and I lay like a tube of toothpaste someone 
had squeezed flat, you came 
bringing your odds and ends of lotions, 
lipstick, perfume, the kimona of rose-colored silk 
to bring me back to life.

And you laughing heartily, and you in tears, 
and you seeing whatever you have seen of me, 
and now after ten years and moving with husbands 
and children and dogs and rooms full of furnishings 
thousands of miles we are: here again, in the same town 
turning up at the same parties, knowing 
too many of each other's secrets to ever talk 
at parties about anything but these 
true and untrue first impressions.

24


AMELIA

I am impressed by the story 
of my mother-in-law's neighbor, 
a lady named Amelia 
who looks like a side of beef on wedgies. 
Amelia has grey hair 
and every other word she says is, 
"goddammit."

Indoors and outdoors, she wears a mumu, 
smokes Camels, carries a poodle.

On fine days, when windows are open, 
you can hear Amelia cough 
all over the neighborhood — 
"goddammit this. . .goddammit that." 
She's outlived two husbands.

Here's the part that gets me.

When she ran off with the second one, 
Amelia's first husband 
drank prussic acid.

The neighbors say 
she must be some woman.

25


1963, NOVEMBER 22

If you were anywhere, 
you remember where you were 
on November 22, 1963, 
and the moment you heard the news 
and who you turned to 
and what you did then.

We've seen the reruns on t.v. so many times 
they've gotten to be like old home movies, 
or Sunset Boulevard, which also starts with death.

My clothes wouldn't fit 
so I didn't get dressed all week.

I had a fire from cedar you had cut. 
The baby was asleep when you called.

You and I had just come back 
from going on-the-road.

We didn't have television,

or even a radio, so after you called 
you came home.

We drove to my uncle's 
and watched.

Everybody went on the road in those days. 
There were freighters leaving for Tangiers 
practically every hour; they were so cheap, 
it was like they were free.

All you had to do was put your thumb out, 
get to the dock, and fall in.

Next thing you knew, you were 
walking around the Vatican.

Nobody got busted for dope; 
we only touched wine;

wherever we went, people invited us in

(except Monte Carlo) 
and we got to Korfu before the casino.

26


Coming back was even easier.

Out of money, we docked,

found a taxi in New York

and drove it west

for a hot-shot named Manny;

besides playing horses,

Manny dealt taxis

to a guy in Oregon who repainted and sold them. 
Not bad, to travel coast to coast in a taxi, 
and our shoes falling apart.

Manny fixed us up

with license plates

made of brown corrugated cardboard.

This perplexed the cops

who woke us where we slept one night

on the taxi seats, parked in an Iowa cornfield.

"Ever been to Cuba?" they asked.

"Gosh, no," we said,

and showed them passports stamped in red,

NOT GOOD FOR CUBA.

I was pregnant

and we had our English straight, 
so they let us go.

Being back — that

was more difficult.

No one wanted to hire

two English majors, fresh off the road,

and one of them pregnant.

We moved to the woods,

ate welfare surplus wheat,

did what work we could.

After the baby comes,

we thought,

maybe we can join

the Peace Corps.

27


But it was November 
before they slit me like a trout 
and hauled the first-born out. 
You'd found a job by then, 
and I was feeling tender 
that first day alone with him.

So there I am.

In the center of a one room cabin 
with a new baby in an old crib, 
and I am listening

to every breath that baby is breathing, 
and I am looking at my own life 
as if it were a sock

I've just realized

I'm wearing inside out, 
and I'm about to turn it.

There is no one around 
who knows our new phone number but you. 
The phone rings and there you are.

You are telling me what has just happened 
2000 miles away in Dallas.

It is 1963, November 22.

28


GAMES

We stop before the display

of the ancient Aztec city

in the small university museum.

On the giant pyramid, two feet tall,

"A priest rips out the heart

of a living victim,"

while on the playing field to the right,

"Players throw a large iron ball 
through a metal ring.

Rather like basketball.

Losing teams are sacrificed to the gods."

Behind the playing field,

a rack displays fifty-thousand skulls, the losers, 
strung like the beads of an abacus.

Aqueducts, sign of an advanced technology, 
stretch beyond the geometrically pleasing city.

My daughter says, "I wouldn't play."

My son says, "I'd run away 
and go somewhere else."

We are nice normal people.

We identify

with the victims.

Past the stuffed passenger pigeon, 
the Chinese vases and the displays on transportation 
I imagine the nightmare heaviness of an iron ball 
which must be heaved up, up

into a circle of metal 
from which it will fall back again, toward you.

There is no safety in this world.

29


WHAT A RELIEF

What a relief.

I've got a fever —101 
like the highway 
down the coast.

That means it's real.

All week I've wondered 
where I'm going.

Now I know. To bed 
with orange juice 
and magazines 
and a country music station.

God bless me.

I'm starting to sneeze.

All week it's been 
premonitions of disaster.

I've stayed low, avoided 
crazed looking shoppers 
in supermarkets, 
air travel, and water.

Now, when my nose 
starts to run, 
it's welcome as a shower 
after a dry week 
of clouds and thunder.

How wonderful.

My throat is really sore.

Listen to my voice. It's going.

All week I thought

I might be having a nervous breakdown. 
I thought I might be getting 
psychosomatic premature senility.

I thought it was my liver 
or something the government 
was putting in the water. 
Congratulations.

It's a cold.

30


THE MAN WHO INVENTED ONE

He was

a strange man, with a wart perhaps 
signifying darkness, an outcast 
who felt a need to name 
what there was between one old toad 
sitting alone under a stone 
in the forest, and one man, 
himself. There was no limit 
to what a man might do, once 
he had begun it: one, 
and one, 
and one. . .

Now we will

our way to light through equation: 
one million stars of which 
no two are the same star, days and nights, 
equal and yet 
not equal.

One day, we hope,

it will also be clear, what 
numbers have to do with multitudes, 
multitudes with solitudes. Meanwhile 
there is one moon, one lamp post, one 
whistling bicyclist —there are one 
dozen eggs, five fingers to 
one hand, one beginning and one end 
for most of us.

31


IDENTIFYING ANIMALS

Have you thought of what it means

to be an animal? It means

to be capable

of spontaneous movement

and rapid motor response to stimulation. 
You can walk, run, jump or fly;

throw up,

or twiddle your cilia.

Even if you hunch into your fur 
or your feathers or scales, 
your skin or shell,

your chitinous exoskeleton 
or your bright glaze of gelatin, 
and pretend to be a rock or vegetable, 
sooner or later 
something is going to 
get a reaction from you.

You'll inhale

the breath of the bestial

and sneeze,

reproduce by fission,

or yell,

"Get in your own lane you sonofabitch." 
Then everyone will know

you're not a lily of the field 
or a mineral, content to erode 
and go into solution.

Act is what animals do, 
you animate 
animus, 
animal.

32


BUS FARE

Today, when I was looking you up 
in the phone book,

I saw the Greyhound number 
and thought of when 
the children were all babies 
and I didn't have a car.

Sometimes on winter afternoons 
when the babies were taking their naps, 
I'd call the bus depot 
and ask how much it cost 
to get to different places 
like Baltimore, or Atlanta, Ga.

It was $68.50 one way to San Francisco, 
forty bucks more if you came right back. 
I almost called today 
to see if the price had changed.

It was good to know 
you didn't have to be rich 
to get somewhere.

33


PORTABLE SHERWOOD ANDERSON

At the end of the 
bicentennial summer, 
a lady was traveling east 
in a car that had seen better days, 
traveling from Oregon to Michigan 
for reasons that will remain unknown to us. 
She was sitting beside her husband 
reading a certain book 
to pass the time.

Now I might as well tell you 
the specific identity of that book 
was The Portable Sherwood Anderson 
and I was that lady traveling 
as I have every summer for ten years 
the road between Oregon and Michigan, 
for reasons we will continue to ignore, 
since what matters is the journey itself 
and the road and the book and the season 
and the sense of the country one gets 
from two thousand four hundred miles worth 
of look-alike interstate rest areas.

Wherever we stopped,

in Oregon or Wyoming or Iowa, 
all along Interstate 80, 
there'd be the same big brick bathroom 
with the same electric

hot-air hand-dryers (for our protection) 
and the same redwood information centers 
and picnic benches and pet walking areas.

In Idaho or Illinois or Nebraska,

I'd ride along reading

The Portable Sherwood Anderson 
and when I looked up, there it would be — 
something brick that looked just like 
the last one.

34


The Stuckeys and Texacos 
were cut from one design 
and Little America 
was a great big gas station. 
A sad feeling slipped over me 
like the dark at the end of summer 
on the eastern ends of time zones, 
a sadness at how one place was getting to be 
too much like another, 
tasteless and conveniently speedy 
like a factory hamburger.

And then it happened, 
just this side of Laramie, 
or Kearney —or Joliet, 
as we pulled into a rest area 
with a statue of Abraham Lincoln, 
where a CB radio club 
was passing out free coffee in styrofoam cups, 
and giving away red, white and blue bicentennial 
anti-litter bumper stickers, 
which a guy in a blue Dodge pickup 
with a "love it or leave it" sign took two of 
and left, 
as did the couple in the van 
with airbrush gargoyles all over it 
and a diffenbachia hanging in the rear window.

It happened so quickly,

I almost didn't notice the boy in embroidered levis 
calling and calling on the payphone, 
calling to someone who didn't answer.

He knocked his forehead against the payphone, 
gently, gently, waiting 
for someone who didn't answer.

And I almost didn't see 
the family of eight climbing out of the station wagon 
with charcoal and lawn chairs,

35


beach balls and steaks, 
a parakeet in a green plastic cage 
and battery television.

When I spotted the traveler,

I was so intent on reaching him,

I walked past the mini-bus named "Utopia," 
past the red-haired cowgirl

and the latin-looking man with five poodles;

I almost stumbled over the old couple 
announcing the end of the world.

I took one of their pamphlets that warned 
we would all be devoured pretty soon 
by a beast that resembles Godzilla, 
but I brushed them off politely 
and made my way toward the stranger 
with sad, familiar eyes.

I thought he might be a relative of mine 
for he looked like a misplaced dreamer 
or a failed chicken farmer 
who had come to this rest area 
like some kind of mid-American 
ancient mariner.

I thought he was eating his lunch 
for he had an egg in his hand 
but he didn't crack it or eat it.

He just looked at it, turning it around.

He stared at the egg.

Then he looked at me.

I looked at him.

He looked at the egg again, reflectively.

And then I asked him.

Clutching my Portable Sherwood Anderson, 
standing in an obscure rest area on Interstate 80 
somewhere west of Rawlins, or Davenport, or Gary, 
I stammered my question.

"Mister —don't I know you from somewhere?

You famous or something?"

"Could be," he answered.

"No one knows more about eggs than I do."

36


LONG DISTANCE

Judy called tonight to say 
her phone bill last month was $187, 
a new record for her.

It worries her, as if

the phone bill were a thermometer 
that says she's sick.

That's why she called.

"It must mean I'm sick.

Do you think so?"

I hope to say the right thing.

I tell her, "No."

I wonder if it really frightens her 
or if there's some comfort 
in the affirmation of that bill 
that she does feel really rotten, 
as when you think it's in your head until 
you find your fever is 103.

To have a friend who has been 
calling long distance at night 
for years is a heavy responsibility. 
What can I say that would be worth it? 
"Probably cheaper than a psychiatrist," 
is good for a while, but now 
it may be time for a new look 
at the situation.

How about a Marxist interpretation? 
Judy, this bill is unfair.

Long distance should cost no more 
than a call to the local drugstore. 
You've got a job in Iowa.

I've got a job in Michigan.

The man you love works in Montana. 
Your mother's in Oregon.

Your cousin's in Pennsylvania.

Your daughter is visiting

37


your ex-husband in California.

And so on.

If these were the old days,

we'd probably all live within

a mile of one another

or not know each other at all.

The telephone is not a mere tool

of communication, it's a time warp

through the zones,

a relative leap through space,

a necessity in this populous but lonely 
neighborhood McLuhan called our "global village."

Judy, you may be out of money,

and you may be lonesome

but you're not sick,

it's the system.

38


TRAVELERS

I'd been trying to take up room on the bus 
so no one would sit with me.

I read my Trollope novel ostentatiously 
as I ate chocolate covered toffee.

In my purse I had a peach 
with skin like the finest flannel 
and the color of a full moon 
when it first comes up in October. 
I was saving that for later.

Then a boy of the road got on; 
how can I express 
his joyless meagerness?

His pants hung on his butt 
like an old paper sack. 
He had a frayed khaki pack. 
Of course, he sat by me.

Taking out his cardboard covered journal, he wrote, 
"Monday. Fog on the coast."

That duty performed, 
he studied his map and ticket, 
good all the way to Eureka.

Feeling guilty,

I almost started a conversation 
as ladies sometimes do on buses 
to younger persons, but he gave me 
such a look of disapproval.

When he took out his bag of granola and prunes 
I could not get back to my Trollope and chocolate 
fast enough.

The dried oats stuck to his lips.

I wish I had not let him sit there.

The peach stayed in my purse.

39


HERE WE ARE

in sunny California

at the Lodi Rod Run. A June day, 
it's 104° and I hate it.

The children and I flop around like 
old grease rags on the car seat, 
the car our only shade.

We do this, look at hot rods, 
for your sake, husband, 
but not too cheerfully.

What do you expect?

Love me, love my fantasies?

Forget it. Love you is enough 
in this metallic heat.

Nearby, a crowd of hot rodders, 
men and their hot rod wives, 
discuss this year's Lodi Rod Run T-shirts 
and how the women's are not big enough 
in the bust. The women berate their men 
more offensively than I would, 
each saying rather proudly,

"You expect me to get into that?"

Forget about Lodi. Now

I'm on the track of a scene . 
from my own past.

Father is leaning on the fence 
talking to the man in leather 
by the air strip.

Mother and I sit

in the old black Buick.

I'm playing I can drive it.

We've been sitting there at least an hour. 
This is our regular Sunday drive.

I flop the steering wheel 
and try to reach the pedals.

I want to get going.

40


Mother says,

"Watching people can be quite fascinating. 
Look at that man and woman.

I think they're fighting."

The woman has hair

the color of a cherry coke.

She's a woman who walks 
with her coat bundled to her like a bathrobe. 
Cigarette in one slim hand, she is graceful, 
tense, growing old quickly.

We can't hear through the glass

but sure enough, abruptly she turns from him.

He makes a movement of conciliation 
which she doesn't see, then goes 
in the opposite direction.

A family files out of the airport cafe.

"They must be related," says mother.

"They all look like potatoes."

We turn on the radio and laugh

at how they start walking to music, 
potato, potato, potato.

(An illusion, I know, a trick,

but it works so well 
sometimes I still do it.) 
Out by the fence 
father's mouth forms words like 
"DeHaviland Dove" and "Handley Page Harrow." 
Mother finds a stick of gum in her purse.

We divide it.

We roll down the windows

to let a breeze in,

but the orange windsock is limp.

Grasshoppers click

in the tan grass off the air strip.

Back to Lodi.

Now you have a new pal.

Who he is, I don't know,

but both of you are saying almost in unison,

41


"Bonneville in '56," and "manifold."

You are saying, "Road Angels" and "headers," 
"modified '32 engine" and

"Southern California Timing Association."

The children fuss.

I rummage around and split

the last stale donut.

There's warm Kool-Aid in the thermos, 
and in my purse,

enough lifesavers to go around, 
once.

Husband, framed in the car window, 
machine love animates you 
even at high temperatures, 
but why am I here?

Old songs on the car radio

make it appear

I move to music 
even I can't hear.


TALKING WITH A TREE

What are you?

Some sort of laurel — an avocado?

/ don't know.

A stem and three flat leaves, a ten 
year old tree with just three leaves 
in a rusty can decorated once by Suzy 
my sister when she was a brownie.

(She's a sophomore in college this year.) 
What do you live on tree?

You've no dirt left.

You must be eating your own can.

Listen.

I don't go in for cruelty to trees.

I've just been busy these past ten years, 
three kids, one thing and another.

But I did notice you, how each time 
you tried for that fourth leaf 
one of the others fell off. I thought 
you'd only got three leaves in you.

Your tiny trunk looks like a fakir's rope, 
tough, standing straight up, 
supporting those three leaves like magic. 
When we moved, you toppled in the U-Haul, 
looked pretty dead, I thought.

With water you pulled through.

That summer we went away, I took you 
out in the back yard.

Humming "Born Free"

I set you out. I said,

"Make it on your own, plant."

In September, I returned 
to find you at my door, 
wasted, thin, and brown.

With water, you came back.

43


Tree, modest three-leaved tree 
growing without dirt or attention, 
what do you want from me? Okay.

I'm going to get you out of that can, 
into something befitting your experience, 
a big clay pot with lots of acid soil in it, 
stones at the bottom for drainage and 
all that garden book stuff. You're tough. 
It's time I did right by you.

So, I did it. And on the second day 
the tree arose from the living dead, 
put on six leaves, then nine, twelve, 
fifteen and eighteen. The leaves were all 
different shapes for a while, 
coming on like valentines, 
leaves like green bats, green birds, 
l-love-you-l-love-you leaves, 
green banana leaves, 
some plump as the faces of babies, 
one broad and magnanimous as a sun hat. 
It had a leafing-out orgy.

It gave itself a regular birthday party.

I almost didn't like it.

It wouldn't fit in the window anymore. 
But I gave it a sunny spot on the kitchen floor 
and let it rise.

This morning, 
drinking my coffee in the tree-green light, 
I told it, "Okay tree, I get the message. 
All these years myself and still — 
I've got to grow.

Just give me room."

44


FIELD POEMS

1

Downtown in my car 
coming to a parking lot 
getting out on the hot 
blacktop: a bunch 
of blue chicory 
was coming to bloom 
in a space of dirt 
about the size 
of a brick 
and some milkweed 
came up at the edge 
where the building 
and blacktop 
hadn't quite stuck 
together. As if

I'd found a hand 
coming out of the 
sidewalk, I cried 
in surprise, 
There's a field 
buried under 
this city.

45


2

In the golden houses 
of summer grass, 
the tent houses 
of tall straw grass 
tied at the top 
with more golden grass 
and some green 
and hollowed 
by backing in slowly 
bottoms rounding a space 
in the still rooted 
sheaf of grass, 
we lived for a summer 
on the wild blackberries, 
the small and large kinds, 
and made another house 
under the bramble patch 
of berry vines 
and another house 
in the morning glory 
and houses we didn't even 
stop to live in, just forgot 
as soon as we'd finished them, 
and houses so perfect 
there have been no such houses 
since in my life, and ate 
apples and three kinds of plums 
from the old trees, 
were self-sufficient, 
and sometimes ate clover 
which grew at the edge 
of the field and the woods 
where we seldom went 
because it was dark 
and an old woman 
was said to have died there 
alone. And we were 
too young to die, 
ever.

46


3

There's a business going in next door.

First thing they chopped down 
was the flowering plum tree.

It had been planted 
by the old couple that lived there 
when it was a farm and a field 
right up to a year ago, planted 
when they were a young couple.

When I asked him why he was chopping, 
the man stopped his axe, laughed at me, 
said, A place of business 
does not need trees.

When the old people were still there 
and complained about the rising taxes, 
the township engineer said, 
Be reasonable. After all, 
this property is too valuable 
to live on.

47


4

One year, that corner 
was nothing but a marsh, 
nothing there but cattails, 
water, willows, coons and 
possums, pheasants, foxes, 
red and black birds.

Next year, there was blacktop, 
cement, a shopping center 
with sixty-seven stores.

Shortly after it opened 
a man went mad there, 
drove his car around the 
blacktop at high speed, 
making wider and wider 
circles, people jumping 
out of his way like frogs 
on a rainy road, 
running for the safety 
of the shopping center. 
Just before the police came, 
he made a final spin 
and disappeared.

48


5

How to plant a wild hedge:

string a wire across an empty field.

In a few years there will be a hedge

of wild honeysuckle, wild grape, asparagus, 
or any other berry-seeding plants eaten 
by the birds who will sit on your wire.

49


6

What's in the empty field 
behind my house?

Dandelions, butter-and-eggs, 
penstemens, hawkweed (red, 
yellow, and orange), 
chicory, nightshade, milkweed, 
cinquefoil, daisy, fleabane, 
wild purple asters, white asters, 
goldenrod, sumac, wild grape, 
yarrow, queen anne's lace, 
gobo (burdock), sticktights, 
winter cress, mustard, thistle, 
poison ivy, wild rose, asparagus, 
wild strawberry, moss, lichen, 
many different kinds of grass, 
wild honeysuckle, mullein, 
red clover, white clover, sweet 
purple clover;

foxes, pheasants, possums, racoons, 
rabbits, orioles, finches, grackles, 
doves, hawks, sparrows, blue jays, 
to begin with.

For sale signs, 
will-build-to-suit signs, 
zoned commercial signs, 
earth movers, dump trucks, 
asphalt, concrete, brick and 
glass and steel 
to end with.

50


ROSES ARE HEAVY FEEDERS

Roses are heavy feeders, 
ravenous as cats when deprived;

I feed them dried blood, 
dust of bone to keep them 
satisfied, and still 
you've seen them scratch. 
Now here is Garnet, the baby, 
and Katherine T. Marshall, 
Angel Face, Peace, Forty-niner, 
to name a few. The ramblers 
are off by themselves 
all over the fence.

Roses must be free. 
When you get them 
tight in a bag or a pot 
you'll find their roots 
snarling and spinning around. 
Like us all, they need to get out. 
Spread their roots.

Give them room.

Make them free and remember that 
roses are heavy feeders.

51


IN THE END OF MARCH

Your mother calls you 
in the end of March 
to come and eat 
your mother calls you 
in the end of March 
her voice sings through the dusk 
the first long evening 
and mud beneath your boots 
in the driveway quivers.

Long white arms 
long white arms 
mother mother 
long white arms 
of snow here and there 
embrace the ground 
for one last time 
in the end of March 
your mother calls you 
when the snow gods go, go 
and you go 
to the house 
where your mother calling 
her invisible voice 
like long white arms 
says come to supper 
come to supper.

You enter the house 
with cold-red cheeks 
you enter the smells 
of brown roast beef 
you enter the house 
of your mother calling 
enter the voice 
of your mother calling 
you enter the mother

52


the smell of the dinner 
you enter the smell 
of soap of vinegar 
you enter the smell 
of wax of gravy 
vinegar gravy soap and wax 
gravy cold cream soap and vinegar 
roast beef cabbage soap 
old newspaper.

The house beneath your feet 
in this long dusk quivers.

The end of March 
the end of March.

Mother mother

let me in.

53


SHE HOPES THIS IS NOT THE BEGINNING

She hopes this is not the beginning 
of something worse 
than what she was once 
in the narrow past.

Hopelessly dirty, she liked 
the sound of rain outside 
and inside a rain-like music. 
Dirty-dishes —she lazily poked them 
with a greasy knife to find 
the can opener.

On Saturday mornings she slept 
later than ever, a thirsty night 
all part of a dream now, 
and woke to spend the day 
drinking coffee and reading 
in a torn bathrobe 
with an elegant velveteen collar 
and in bare, dirty feet.

Supper was mainly a poem 
or lovemaking on an unmade bed, 
then a cigarette shared 
and an evening of company 
or a ride on the bike 
to some place 
where there would be people.

What possesses her now 
to wash the dishes right after supper, 
empty the ashtrays and spend 
hours in the kitchen or choosing 
the best soaps for the washing?

Is it good to wear nylons and go 
to bed by eleven, 
to rise and make pancakes 
with syrup by seven?

54


It may not be kind, 
or even fair 
to ask these questions.

55


DREAMS ABOUT TEETH

are almost common as teeth: 
your caps fall from your mouth 
like squash blossoms from the plant; 
teeth crumble on food 
as if they were made of crackers, 
or pop from the gums 
bloodless and wet as watermelon seeds. 
Your dream may warn you 
a tooth is about to split 
like a sidewalk thawing, 
or you imagine teeth 
which grow in the wrong places 
as in the end of thumb and forefinger.

Treacherous teeth, 
you refuse to last one lifetime 
but like cowards bragging after a battle 
identify us in death 
by the pattern of our expensive fillings.

How young I was 
and how young my mother was 
when she first took me to the dentist 
already imperfect 
with my rotten little teeth 
like kernels of bad corn. They hurt. 
They hurt more than any 
hot chloroform drops 
or oil of clove could assuage.

How old the building was 
and how old the dentist, 
a novacaine-furred beast 
with hands cold-creamed like a lady's. 
His glasses reflected my fear.

Get me some water, I said. 
There's a rock in my shoe.

56


There's something outside the window.

I need to look.

But he killed me with gas.

Oh, mother.

Then there was the dentist 
who pulled two teeth 
and sent me back on the street with a bill 
before mother got the car parked.

And Dr. Baker — 
until his tractor rolled over, 
and Dr. Wu, Chinese, who was so good, 
replacing Dr. Baker's fillings.

And allegorical Dr. Dark 
who fixed the tooth I had broken 
on gravel, eating lentils in Greece. 
Then there was the endodontist 
who did the root canal 
on the tooth Dr. Dark had crowned, 
and the extractionist who pulled the tooth 
when the root canal failed, 
and Dr. Luke who built the gold bridge 
to gleam in the space left by that, 
and who has been drilling 
and capping and cleaning and filling 
my teeth for ten years now.

(I've settled down.

I'm letting my teeth fall apart 
in one town.)

Oh, teeth, 
you do not bite right.

You make my jaw crack.

I grind you.

You have a yellow stain 
from when I had the measles 
at the age of four.

(So says Dr. Luke. How wise. 
He reads my past in my teeth,

57


sordid story

of an imperfect life.)

Well, Queen Elizabeth the first 
had dead black teeth

in a pock-marked face masked 
with ground bones and egg-white.

Thank Cod for progress and modern technology.

The language of dentistry

is so much more appealing than the process.

A crown, a cap, a bridge, a canal —it reminds me 
of something royal and medieval.

But they have these machines, these robots, 
all graceful metal elbows and insect arms.

The little table is a pinched pie crust, 
a waiter's tray, a platform in space.

You put your cup in its place 
and water tumbles into it.

The ice blue glassware, the sterling silver 
instruments.

A giant molar on the windowsill, with plants. 
Colorful prints of peridontal disease, 
muzak, and ceiling tiles

in which the pattern is mathematically 
irregular.

The comforting technician 
uses the first person plural 
as she cups your chin in her plump, warm hands 
and clucks like a concerned mother 
if you do not floss right.

The fillings are plastic.

The drills are all high speed, 
and though there is a sinister smell of heat, 
the pain is minimal and over quickly.

Still, your hands sweat.

Still, you want a drink of water.

The rock in your shoe has gnawed to the bone 
but there's nothing else to do.

58


The first cavity is the first Fall.

No wonder dreams of teeth are common.

59


HOW WAS IT?

You know something I like?

It's after a party 
when the sun comes up — 
if there are still

two or three friends left, 
maybe somebody 
wakes up on the floor 
or gets their second wind 
taking a run around the block. 
You wave at the street cleaner 
or take a piss in the alley, 
and then 
you start to talk.

Dumb friendly talk like, 
did you see old so and so, 
or did you get a load of 
me when. . .

Dying could be like that.

It wouldn't be half so bad 
if you could sit around and say, 
did you see me when I got my 
head lopped off?

Or, how about that? Front page 
in three counties!

And me so dignified.

You'd all laugh

and think how you'd died. 
Though you had to pay for it after 
with a bad taste or red eyes, 
you'd feel good 
about each other, 
and get on then 
with something else.

But what I don't like is 
being alone 
with all those dirty plates 

60


and the wet butts in the bottles. 
The room smells like dirt 
when you're alone there.

With nobody to talk to about 
how it was.

61


KNOWLEDGE

I ask myself what I know

at thirty-eight and

two degrees past high school.

I know something about people, 
something about poetry,

how to bake a quiche so it won't curdle, 
how to swing a hammer for nailing cedar. 
I've forgotten the constellations I knew once. 
I'll learn them back!

These answers are somehow unsatisfying.

Whatever I know

only touches the surface of things 
as water spiders do,

thought riding the silvery film 
of pressure meeting pressure.

I do know

it's not tension alone

that keeps water spiders afloat.

I saw in a book

how each holds tiny balls of air 
clenched in its insect fists.

Fist?

That claw, hand, nail, or —pincer.

What do you call the digit of an insect 
by which it holds a pearl of air 
and thus contrives to walk on water?

A thing worth knowing 
which I don't.

We should live forever.

62


Printed March 1978 in East Lansing

for the Red Cedar Press by Michigan State University Printing. 
Text is set in 11 pt. Optima.

The Red Cedar Press also publishes the

Red Cedar Review, a bi-annual magazine 
of the arts.

63


Figure without caption.
Photo: Harry Smallenburg

Barbara Drake was born in Abilene, Kansas, in 1939, but grew up in 
Oregon. After attending the University of Oregon, as a graduate 
and undergraduate, she moved to Michigan with her husband children in 1966. She is currently teaching in the Department of 
American Thought and Language at Michigan State University. 
During the summers she lives on the southern Oregon coast.

64


Figure without caption.
Red Cedar Press 
East Lansing, Michigan 
1978 
$2.50