A poem about a visit to my then partner’s family in New York State, 1984.
Her mother sits in the sitting room
surrounded by shelves of books,
with a piano to accompany her.
We watch cardinals come in to the bird table.
The oxygen apparatus pumps, locusts rasp and rattle,
Walnut leaves cast quivering shadows on the grasses.
She tells me the Onondaga Nation consider the periodical cicadas to be a delicacy
that tastes like popcorn and potato chips mixed together.
Her father watches a game.
He was a concert violinist, a Roosevelt new dealer, a sniper in the war.
Later he ran a garage and petrol station.
Breathing in the fumes led to this, and smoking, no doubt.
Though they say that winter in the Ardennes, sleeping in foxholes,
is what started his decline.
Do you understand the game? He asks.
There is little in that inquiry really.
We are content to sit and watch.
In town we stop at the bar for a beer,
the blades of the air cooler thwump above our heads.
The TV is on – the Olympic opening ceremony –
Reagan and Fanfare for the Common man.
All that razzmatazz.
We shoot pool
drink beer
eat peanuts.
We walk back along the rail track
Past silos like rockets waiting for take-off.
She puts her hand on my arm –
whirring blurs flit in and out of honeysuckle trumpets.
A quiet, persistent buzz
a high-pitched call
a rubbing rasping sound
like a squeaky trolley wheel –
red-throated hummingbirds she whispers.
Back at the house
At the table
I pick up the paper
Last month in San Ysidro,
in a rampage in and around the Macdonald’s,
a man shot 21 dead and wounded 19.
The police took 70 minutes to arrive and act on the scene.
The man was killed by a sniper, 73 minutes after police were informed.
A Mexican couple with their four-month old daughter pull up in the car park and he shoots them wounding the baby critically.
The baby dies.
She leads me into the field of cars – out from the shade beneath the trees
into the intense hot metal heat.
They’ve been parked up some time – a slow breaker’s yard.
Flat tires, pitted chrome, rust, eaten out interiors.
Saplings break through roofs and windows.
Fins and steel sculpted wings are no longer part of any motion.
Stick shifts, handbrakes, steering wheels are now untouched.
Rubber trims slowly give succour to mosses.
He left them here – past projects that might go somewhere,
now slowly falling back into nature – wrecks being recovered.
He won’t be working on them any more; they’ll keep fading,
an occasional bidder might come along, or someone looking for a part.
We listen to the locusts.
A slight breeze offers a cold caress
in the midst of all this heat.
We are still.
We do not speak.
Snakes lurk here under warm hoods,
and the baby is dead.
We are offered a car –
a lime-green station wagon, battered and patched,
almost ready for the field of cars.
Automatic with a side shift – just like in the movies,
the electric rear window clunks down, but hesitates on the up.
We ride over bumps to look out over the lake.
The burning heat is cooling fast.
Cloud rushes in and covers the sky in grey/black pulsing curtains.
A sharp crack then a deep low rumble so close the car shakes.
A fierce wind whips up breakers on the lake, like there’s a chopper above stirring it all up – coming to the rescue.
Sheet lightning flash lights the turbulence.
Relentless gushing rain turns everything to water,
then rapid-fire bullet hail batters the car.
The wipers judder scrape the screen but are soon immobilized by ice balls.
We sit marooned until the storm blows out
and the sun brakes through
and everything heats up rapidly
so there is steam,
and everywhere is fogged.
We spark up post storm cigarettes,
she talks of when she left America
to cycle around England.
How she came to be an au pair.
The death of the then wife
and becoming a new wife and mother
of three boys and a stepdaughter.
We don’t talk of the day I picked her up from the clinic
and she was so sad, weak and pale.
We did not talk of sadness or regret.