ON THE RESERVATION

111. ON THE RESERVATION:

Bulgar wheat and the fine wailing of sopranos and mincemeat and rice and cornbread and coffee and the listing of old ships and the warriors on the sea and my father's last picture (in 1953) on New Year's Eve standing before his '47 Plymouth proud like a mountain lion and coaxing truth from some forgotten Bayonne rock and if he knew a foreign language to speak I know he would have spoken it just to say 'it is me and I am here and it is long ago BUT I am looking to the future and just as simply THAT IS THAT' and it's so insular and single all these things I do and I do them alone now left on earth without an other or a them and I wish for no disturbance to break my skin or utter forth from scabrous words the chants and likings of myth and the confabulated rhymes - and I run to Staten Island to see the new disease or I prance to southern Jersey to sense the mind of trees and water kept together but all I get are THESE : senseless messages from the dead a failing candle in an old loft window two dusty books written in by Mark Twain and a message from the doughboy in his uniform telling me what this death is really like - but I can see no edges except the girl who brings forth desire and when it alights upon my arm I do so desire whatever there is and she speaks softly back to me with one arm over the hem of the couch in velvet green 'don't listen for the sound and be more happy with silence as it comes from the grave' and with a shrug of my shoulders and a turn of my head I mention to her that all this talk of the dead really gives me the creeps and she smiles back JUST ONE MORE TIME to say 'on the reservation EVERYTHING like this is taken care of for you - you really ought to go.'