this business of mine

the well is deep
and I ponder it often
especially in early morning hours
a specialty of mine
there is a lesson to learn
and I could should learn it
so I am looking sideways
upside down
then backwards
a complicated process
this business of mine
just trying to figure out
all of it
before the ink runs dry

Climbing Yenchou Tower by Tu Fu

Visiting my father in East District
I finally looked out from South Tower
clouds stretched beyond Taishan to the sea
barren land spread through Hsu and Chingchou
the outline of the stele of Ch’in was still there
the walls of Lu Palace were rubble
I\ve always been drawn to the past
but this time my heart trembled

translated by Red Pine

from The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever

Moses’s feelings were strenuous but not sad and he did not remember the skimming fleet at the ten-minute signal before a race or the ruined orchards where he hunted grouse or Parson’s Pond and the cannon on the green and the water of the river shining between the hardware store and the five-and-ten-cent store where Cousin Justina had once played the piano. We are all inured, by now, to those poetic catalogues where the orchid and the overshoe appear cheek by jowl; where the filthy smell of old plumage mingles with the smell of the sea. We have all parted from simple places by train or boat at season’s end with generations of yellow leaves spilling on the north wind as we spill our seed and the dogs and the children in the back of the car, but it is not a fact that at the moment of separation a tumult of brilliant and precise images–as though we drowned–streams through our heads. We have indeed come back to lighted houses, smelling on the north wind burning applewood, and seen a Polish countess greasing her face in a ski lodge and heard the cry of the horned owl in rut and smelled a dead whale on the south wind that carries also the sweet note of the bell from Antwerp and the dishpan summons of the bell from Altoona but we do not remember all this and more as we board the train.

the only place left to go

the future hangs over
everything I do
like a weight
an anvil, say
around my neck
or a cloud
a rain cloud
overhead
like some cartoon character
moving quickly forward
while a storm brews
the weight slowing my scurrying
toward shelter
though there is no shelter
apparent to me
on this, or any, horizon
oh well
what else to do
but stumble on
going forward
toward what can only be called
an uncertain future
the only place left
to go