You want a couple more poems from this book.
I went to school.
When I was a sophomore in high school--
I'm sure you can all remember being 15--
I went to a school that had eight students,
on the top of a mountain in North Carolina.
2,000 acres and this school.
And there were seven guys and one poor girl who was a senior,
and everybody else was freshmen and sophomores.
She must have had a miserable life there.
I mean, we did, so she must have.
The place was run by the daughter of the Episcopal
Bishop of South Carolina who was, if nothing else,
certainly evangelical in her attitudes.
Her son was likewise.
He was an Episcopal priest.
And we used to do things like have prayer vigils at night.
Which was all right, except when you're 15,
you really don't care to be waked up at 2 o'clock
and told to go down, it's your turn
to pray for two hours for peace in India or something.
I mean, you know.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It's just that at 15, you don't care.
You've got other problems, like how
are you going to get through tomorrow or whatever.
Anyhow, so on and so forth.
Anyhow, it was a very susceptible age,
and it stayed with me.
This particular poem is called "Northhanger Ridge."
Again, a phony name for a faux place, for no particular reason
as I know it, that I know of.
Because two poems back, there's one called "Sky Valley Rider,"
and the name of the place was Sky Valley,
what I call it anyways.
I think because Jane Austen has a book called "Northanger
Abbey," and I loved that title.
And so I stuck an extra "h" in it
and called it "Northhanger Ridge,"
because it sounded good.
I don't think you're supposed to say those things.
But that's why I did it.
The first things, I'm starting out
trying to paint the place as I remember it.
I'm using a lot of pained phrases.
"Northhanger Ridge."
Half-bridge over nothingness.
White sky of the palette knife; blot orange, vertical blacks;
blue, bird-like, drifting up from the next life.
The heat-waves, like consolation, wince--
one cloud, like a trunk, stays shut above the horizon;
off to the left, dream-wires, hill-snout like a crocodile's.
Or so I remember it.
There are clenched teeth in their clenched mouths,
their voices like shards of light, brittle, unnecessary.
Ruined shoes, roots, the cabinet of lost things.
This is the same story.
Its lips in flame, its throat a dark water,
the page stripped of its meaning.
Sunday, and Father Dog is turned loose: Up the long road
the children's feet snick in the dust like raindrops;
the wind excuses itself and backs off;
inside, heat lies like a hand on each head; slither and cough.
Now Father Dog addles our misconceptions, points, preens,
his finger a white flag, run up, run down.
Bow-wow and arf, the Great Light; o, and the Great Yes,
and the Great No; redemption, the cold kiss of release,
et cetera; sentences, sentences.
Meanwhile, docile as shadows, they stare from their four
corners, looks set; no glitter escapes
this evangelical masonry.
Candle flame, vigil and water flow; by dust in the night,
the prayers rise from 6:00 to 6:00 under the sick Christ.
The children talk to the nothingness, cross, rack,
and wound; the dark moon burns like a coal,
grows ash to the touch, ash to the tongue's tip.
Blood turns in the wheel; something
drops from the leaves; the drugged moon twists and turns
in its sheets.
Sweet breath in a dry corner, the Black Widow
reknits her dream.
Salvation again declines, and sleeps
like a skull on the hard ground, nothing for ears,
nothing for eyes.
It sleeps as it's always slept; without shadow,
waiting for nothing.