Pasco, Barbara

I find I am descending in a propeller plane upon Pasco

in the state of Washington. I accept this;

I have reasons for participating in the experiential sequence

that has brought me here. Down below the land is printed

with huge circles, doubtless an irrigation system,

doubtless it makes sense. There are people who understand it

living with dignity in square houses

and the result possibly is one billion radishes.

Now some so-called time has passed. This nation

is a huge nation in which the infinity of for example

Washington State

is just one segment of an even less thinkable hugeness

and yet zim zim zim zim United Airlines has me

here in my Eastern metropolis

with its ten thousand makers of third-rate pizza

uncannily far from the possible radishes of Washington State.

The taxi driver experiments with narrow streets

to shorten our detour caused by sports fans and he says

the Eagles will out-tough the Steelers.

I defer to his judgment, I am conserving my powers.

After “a while” I have this unsettlingly smooth tuna salad

with a pale pickle

in a drugstore designed by Dwight D. Eisenhower,

reading a few poems by David Rivard. I have thoughts.

I have my Uncle Ralph’s jacket soft and droopy giving me

a Sense of the Past. The rain out there

on the roofs of retail outlets is saying No Guarantee

and in a way I am nowhere, in another way maybe

definitely not. In a wide wet parking lot

I turn back toward the store to explain to the cashier

that she charged me for six cans of seltzer when in fact

I only had one from a six-pack

but the idea of justice seems so fatiguing

I would rather read a surprisingly serious detective novel

so I vibrate with indecision in the parking lot

till all the car windows rattle imperceptibly. Then

an alleged interval ostensibly intervenes, at the mall

a woman at a piano has played 1800 songs from memory

according to the radio personality who stands with a mike

explaining her bid for the Guinness Book of Records.

I am walking away at an unplanned angle singing “Tiny Montgomery”

which I bet she wouldn’t have been ready to play.

I have this inner life, I think of my father

lonely in Vermont, I think of myself lonely in Syracuse

and my old poem about a detective who can’t solve his biggest case

and as a result I have feelings—but my teacher said

the future of American poetry can’t be merely

the notation of sensibility. When he said that I felt

a chilly fear at the edge of consc-consc-consc-consciousness

like an ice cube in the corner of my stomach.

That’s how I felt. So then, so then consequently

I thought “I must gather up some serious ideas” but then

Ashberry phoned and left a message after the beep.

“Don’t be a sucker, ideas are where it isn’t.”

This made my throat get sort of dry so I drank a Classic Coke

and then another Classic Coke two hours later

as time so-to-say passed. What was always there?

Texture, that’s what, how it was/is, the how of how;

when I pick up my color prints at the camera shop

the disappointment I always feel is actually a blessing

is it not? I can say “I’ll go along with this charade

until I can think my way out” even though I’ll never

think my way out. I’ve come this far;

that day in 1971 I hitchhiked all the way to Montpelier

didn’t I? And here I am.

Suddenly I have a son

who focuses with tremendous insistence upon

dogs, balloons, air conditioners, hats, clocks, and noses.

To him I convey that the world is okay:

life is good: we accept it. Your dad is a little mixed up

but your shoes got tied, right?

As Barbara Cohen in high school said about politics

it’s interesting, giving the word four earnest syllables,

in-ter-est-ing.

Source: Selfwolf (The University of Chicago Press, 1999)