Men Talk
It was the winter I had to get away.
Though I didn't know it then,
I needed the kind of solace
you get at depressing moving
if they're good; all those others
just like you. In Orlando,
biding time, I watched peacocks
among people in a wooded preserve,
then drove further inland past cattle
to where my friend lived.
I was glad the peacocks made awful
sounds, and I was glad—
after we jogged his circular path
through the orange groves—
that our polite, complete sentences
broke down into talk
of his empty house, the woman who left,
and then my house far away.
I told him what staying meant, as if
I knew; the precipice in every room.
Friendship: someone leaning
to your side of the truth.
Next day was beautiful,
seventy-five degrees, and each of us
silent, back in control.
We walked into the countryside,
pointed away from ourselves
toward the landscape,
took possession of it for a while.
Kumquats were growing next to lemons
and white birds rode the backs of cows.
Though it wasn't, it seemed enough,
seemed we'd never have to speak again.
Between Angels
Between angels, on this earth
absurdly between angels, I
try to navigate
in the bluesy middle ground
of desire and withdrawal,
in the industrial air,
among the bittersweet
efforts of people to connect,
make sense, endure.
The angels out there,
what are they?
Old helpers, half-believed,
or dazzling better selves,
imagined,
that I turn away from
as if I preferred
all the ordinary, dispiriting
tasks at hand?
I shop in the cold
neon aisles
thinking of pleasure,
I kiss my paycheck
a mournful kiss goodbye
thinking of pleasure,
in the evening replenish
my drink, make a choice
to read or love or watch,
and increasingly I watch.
I do not mind living
like this. I cannot bear
living like this.
Oh, everything's true
at different times
in the capacious day,
just as I don't forget
and always forget
half the people in the world
are dispossessed.
Here chestnut oaks
and tenements
make their unequal claims.
Someone thinks of betrayal.
A child spills her milk;
I'm on my knees cleaning it up—
sponge, squeeze, I change nothing,
just move it around.
The inconsequential floor
is beginning to shine.
(c) 1989 by Stephen Dunn. All rights reserved.
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