Strange Occupations

Once after school, hobbling from place to place, I remember you liked the dry kind of cookies with only a little sugar to flavor them. I remember that you liked Wheatena. You were the only person I knew who did. Don’t you remember how we used to fish for kelp? Got to the town with the relaxed, suburban name, Remembering how trees were green there, Greener than a sudden embarrassed lawn in April. How we would like to live there, and not in a different life, either. We sweltered along in our union suits, past signs marked “Answer” and “Repent,” and tried both, and other things. Then—surprise! Velvet daylight came along to back us up, providing the courage that was always ours, had we but known how to access it downstairs. We used to crawl to so many events together: a symphony of hogs in a lilac tree, and other, possibly even more splendid, things until the eyelid withdrew. Now I can sample your shorts. So much more is there for us now— runnels that threaten to drown the indifferent one who sticks his toe in them. Much, much more light. To whose office shall we go tomorrow? I’d like to hear the new recording of clavier variations. Oh, help us someone! Put out the night and the fire, whose backdraft is even now humming her old song of antipathies.