I have no idea how I'm doing on time.
I think you're going to have to get the hook.
[LAUGHTER]
You tell me, right?
Yeah.
OK.
This is called, "Sleep 1972."
A true story, deplorably.
Wearing patch jeans and a man's hunting cap for effect I
showed up at the public assistance
offices somewhere in Mt.
Kisco, New York.
Who was I trying to impress?
I had two-year-old Rachel in one arm,
a big floral shopping bag-- containing a box of pastels,
a book or two of poetry, a novel, diapers--
in the other.
We'd hitchhiked there on the New England Thruway.
An old woman picked us up in her Oldsmobile.
She had thin, tan hair.
And as we crept along decades under the speed limit
she gripped the wheel fiercely, as if maneuvering a tug boat
over a mountain.
From the backseat, I took in the sad color of her scalp.
I was worried for her.
"Do you always pick up hitchhikers?"
I asked.
[LAUGHTER]
At which, she stiffened.
So I shut up and closed my eyes.
I was always tired.
In the mornings after the kids caught the school bus
I'd crawl back into bed with the baby.
After a day spent reading or staring at the frozen lake
I'd be exhausted again.
The kids returning from school wore me out,
so did dinnertime and bedtime.
I was tireder than tired trees losing my leaves
in my late 20s.
Tireder than the lake's frozen dormant surface.
I was dead to the world.
As I slept, the ice boaters raced by.
They ran behind their boats, leapt on when
the wind caught their sails.
The sound of them like giant zippers zipping by
entered my dreams.
In the welfare office I lit up, Rachel beside me.
And God knows how many other kids
with their smoking parents.
We blew the smoke around with abandon.
Our kids already beyond hope.
They were used to it.
Their snow suits, even their little heads reeking
of nicotine.
There was a woman with a sore leg sitting nearby.
She was all bandaged up, her child wearing a hat,
completely obscured his face, rocked in a stroller.
A thin girl with a resolving black eye
fidgeted with the loops of her jacket.
The black eye was beautiful-- purples and gold shot through
with turquoise flame.
Her other brown eye calm stared, stared ahead, trance-like.
On the wall signs advised us of our rights
to patiently wait our turns, have our IDs
handy, use birth control.
A few magazines lay around, but they never
transported me anywhere.
It's kind of a shout out to Elizabeth Bishop,
a famous poem called, "In the Waiting Room,"
where, at the end, she does, indeed, get transported.
But this poor person, me in the past, was not, apparently.