Fires. Essays, Poems, Stories

hear again the voice of the croupier calling thirty-two, thirty-two as my body flies over water, as my soul, poised like a cat, hovers-then leaps into sleep.
    SPRING, 480 B.C.
    Enraged by what he called
    the impertinence of the Hellespont in blowing up a storm which brought to a halt his army of 2 million,
    Herodotus relates that Xerxes ordered 300 lashes be given that unruly body of water besides throwing in a pair of fetters, followed by a branding with hot irons. You can imagine
    how this news was received
    at Athens; I mean that the Persians were on the march.
    FOUR 0
    NEAR KLAMATH
    We stand around the burning oil drum and we warm ourselves, our hands and faces, in its pure lapping heat
    We raise steaming cups of coffee
    to our lips and we drink it
    with both hands. But we are salmon
    fishermen. And now we stamp our feet on the snow and rocks and move upstream, slowly, full of love, toward the still pools.
    AUTUMN
    This yardful of the landlord's used cars does not intrude. The landlord himself, does not intrude. He hunches all day over a swage, or else is enveloped in the blue flame of the arc-welding device.
    He takes note of me though, often stopping work to grin and nod at me through the window. He even apologizes for parking his logging gear in my living room.
    But we remain friends. Slowly the days thin, and we move together towards spring, towards high water, the jack-salmon, the sea-run cutthroat
    WINTER INSOMNIA
    The mind can't sleep, can only lie awake and gorge, listening to the snow gather as for some final assault.
    It wishes Chekov were here to minister something—three drops of valerian, a glass of rose water—anything, it wouldn't matter.
    The mind would like to get out of here onto the snow. It would like to run with a pack of shaggy animals, all teeth,
    under the moon, across the snow, leaving no prints or spoor, nothing behind. The mind is sick tonight
    PROSSER
    In winter two kinds of fields on the hills
    outside Prosser fields of new green wheat, the slips
    rising overnight out of the plowed ground,
    and waiting,
    and then rising again, and budding.
    Geese love this green wheat.
    I ate some of it once too, to see.
    And wheat stubble-fields that reach to the river. These are the fields that have lost everything. At night they try to recall their youth, but their breathing is slow and irregular as their life sinks into dark furrows. Geese love this shattered wheat also. They will die for it
    But everything is forgotten, nearly everything, and sooner rather than later, please Godfathers, friends, they pass into your life and out again, a few women stay a while, then go, and the fields turn their backs, disappear in rain. Everything goes, but Prosser.
    Those nights driving back through miles of wheat
    fields-headlamps raking the fields on the curves— Prosser, that town, shining as we break over hills, heater rattling, tired through to bone, the smell of gunpowder on our fingers still: I can barely see him, my father, squinting through the windshield of that cab, saying, Prosser.
    AT NIGHT THE SALMON MOVE
    At night the salmon move
    out from the river and into town.
    They avoid places with names
    like Foster's Freeze, A&W, Smiley's,
    but swim close to the tract
    homes on Wright Avenue where sometimes
    in the early morning hours
    you can hear them trying doorknobs
    or bumping against Cable TV lines.
    We wait up for them.
    We leave our back windows open
    and call out when we hear a splash.
    Mornings are a disappointment.
    WITH A TELESCOPE ROD ON COWICHE CREEK
    Here my assurance drops away. I lose
    all direction. Gray Lady
    onto moving waters. My thoughts
    stir like ruffed grouse
    in the clearing across the creek.
    Suddenly, as at a signal, the birds pass silently back into pine trees.
    POEM FOR DR. PRATT, A LADY PATHOLOGIST
    Last night I dreamt a priest came to me
    holding in his hands white bones,
    white bones in his white hands.
    He was gentle,
    not like Father McCormick with his webbed fingers.
    I was not frightened.
    This afternoon the maids come with their mops and disinfectant. They pretend I'm not there, talk of menstrual cycles as they push my bed this way and that. Before leaving, they embrace. Gradually, the room fills with leaves. I am afraid.
    The window is open. Sunlight. Across the room a bed creaks, creaks under the weight of lovemaking. The man clears his throat. Outside, I hear sprinklers. I begin to void. A green desk floats by the window.
    My heart lies on the table, a parody
    of