And this poem is a much more modest notion
of what art does-- just naming things before they flash out
of existence.
But there is some resistance in the poem
also to the modesty of that formulation.
It's called "The List."
"How the frail, shimmering hollyhocks share in a bloom
that's deathless and invisible.
That was the question that kept students awake
chewing their quills in the old school,
staring at the blank pages of diaries.
How much simpler for me to make my list
of every shimmering, dying thing I come across?
Rainy West Elm Street gets a line,
and rain washed Ellicott Elementary School
with the puddles in the schoolyard and the sunrise
on the flags of the car lot and the cars themselves
dozing in the shadows.
As for the beautiful moments,
why should I wait around anymore for the sidewalk to part
like the Red Sea or the painter's ladder
to fill with angels--
visions that prove the world a dream?
The moments that make the world seem real are all I need now.
I can add to my list the foggy morning
when the children next door woke me with a trumpet fanfare.
I can add this evening's walk with Karen
to the dock and our comments on last night's movie.
What exactly went wrong with it?
We make the confusions of ugly art
beautifully clear by the time we pause at the tracks
to count the boxcars--
close to 100, all sporting the rust I noticed as a boy.
They've almost dropped their pretense of utility.
They're rattling by again.
Seems part of a ritual to make us feel at home.
And maybe it will work this time,
if I don't imagine us welcomed elsewhere counting
the boxcars in another world."