the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, bowling
Number 498, May 17, 2004
Whoo-hah!
“I don’t think one can ever know any but one’s own countrymen.
For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which
they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk,
the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the
food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets
they read, and the God they believed in.”
—W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge
Paradise
Missouri
is Paradise. The center of the Earth. The Garden of Eden.
In
Genesis, “So the Lord put him out of the garden of
Eden to farm the soil from which he was fashioned.” In some translations, Adam
is made only to see the Garden differently—as if he never left it, but was made
to toil in it.
This, I think, is Missouri. It is perfect. Four seasons. Diverse
people, some backward, some forward. Soils that grow anything. Cold springs and
warm, muddy water filled with life. Climates from desert to swamp, and
everything between. Orchids and cactus.
Only Midwesterners don’t see it that way. We only see hardship.
Heat. Cold. Allergies. Mosquitoes. Bugs.
But in Paradise, everything has its place, every natural
occurrence, every animal, bug, bacterium, mold, virus, and spore. Even humans.
When one is eliminated, the rest are hurt. Maybe not in ways that are apparent
(or that humans understand right away), but over time, the absence of the life,
the DNA inhabiting that niche affects the rest.
Maybe some other DNA vessel rushes in. Maybe some new variation
fits there. Maybe nothing, ever, quit fits there again, but a host of things
overlap.
It’s wonderful. And that’s Missouri. As much as it’s been changed,
it remains itself. I met an Indian once who said Indians were good about
waiting. They were waiting for White men to come, and they are waiting now for
White men to leave. White men, he said, can’t stand still long enough to live.
I liked that, a lot. I told him I was from Missouri. That I was
created there. That I worked there, and that I would return there. I would
always return there.
You will certainly die there, he said.
Why? I
asked.
Because
you have found heaven.
It made
me think about Adam and the Garden. It opened my eyes to the fact that God
couldn’t fool me any longer. It had fashioned me from the soil of the river,
masked my eyes from its goodness, hoped that I wouldn’t find that Indian. But I
had. And now I knew what God knew.
I told
that to the Indian. That’s what God wants everyone to find out, he said.
digging to china
since when did you care
what you look like?
comb, brush, floss
hairspray, creases all over
a moment in a mirror
or a look in an old man’s eye
something that sparked
recognition
that everything was falling
victim to gravity
at the center of the earth
however
that everything you saw
at the drive-thru
in traffic
at the window at the coffee shop
turns in on itself
comes out again
just the same as before
on the other side
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