A Quiet Place

I have come to understand my love for you. I came to you like a man, world-weary, looking for a quiet place. The gas station and grocery store, the church, the abandoned school, a few old houses, the river with its cool shady spots . . . good fishing. How I’ve longed for a place like this! As soon as I got here I knew I’d found it. Tomorrow the set production and camera crews arrive. We can begin filming on Monday: the story of a man looking for a quiet place.

First Snow

By dusk the snow is already partially melted. There are dark patches where the grass shows through, like islands in the sea seen from an airplane. Which one is home? The one I left as a child? They all seem the same now. What became of my parents? What about all those things I started and never finished? What were they? As we get older we become more alone. The man and his wife share this gift. It is their breakfast: coffee and silence, morning sunlight. They make love or they quarrel. They move through the day, she on the black squares, he on the white. At night they sit by the fire, he reading his book, she knitting. The fire is agitated. The wind hoots in the chimney like a child blowing in a bottle, happily.

Motorcycle

He climbs on, switches on the ignition, kicks the starter: once, twice, three, four, five times . . . nothing. He tries a dozen more times. It won’t go. He checks the gas tank. Got gas. He switches the key off and on, tries again. It still won’t go. He climbs off the bike and squats down to look at the engine. Check the carburetor, check the wires . . . seems okay. He takes a wrench from his jacket pocket and removes the spark plug. He examines it, blows on it, wipes it on his jeans, replaces the plug, climbs back on the bike and tries again. Nothing. Now he is getting really angry. There is absolutely no reason why this thing shouldn’t start. He gets off the bike and stands and stares at it. He gets back on and kicks the starter really hard half-a-dozen times. Now he is furious. He gets off and throws the wrench he is still holding as far as he can. It bounces on the gravel down the road and skids into the weeds in the ditch. Then he turns and kicks the son-of-a-bitch motorcycle over on its side and walks away. After a short distance he thinks better of it and returns to the motorcycle. It isn’t sobbing quietly. It doesn’t say, “I don’t want to play with you anymore” or “I don’t love you anymore” or “I have my own life to live” or “I have the children to think of.” It only lies there leaking oil and gas. He rights the motorcycle and carefully wipes off the dust, carefully mounts and once more tries the starter. Even now it won’t go. He gets down and sits in the dirt beside the broken motorcycle.

Sailors

When the ship gets into port the sailors all go nuts. They get drunk and dance and wake up the next afternoon in the whorehouse. And if a sailor gets thrown in jail he doesn’t care because he just got paid and has enough money to get out. None of the sailors wants to go back to the ship. One thing sailors can’t stand is the sight of water. One sailor hides out in a laundromat. One makes plans to marry. Another is still drunk. The sailors hate this lousy port. The ship sails at dawn with all hands, but someone has sneaked whiskey aboard. By midnight the crew is drunk and the ship is dead in the water. The captain is furious and shouts over the intercom to the engine room. But they are all asleep, rocked in their little cradle on the sea.

The Lighthouse

Light flashes across the water and is gone, like headlights across the wall of a dark room where someone is lying awake. It happens so quickly; no way to take back the things that were said. Your son drove headlong into a train. Your daughter is in a Mexican jail. It’s a house passed at eighty miles an hour. Did anyone live there? The night, the sea, the wind and the rocks, the terrible current off shore . . . It is good to see the light across the water. It is a warning. This is the place where the land ends and the water begins or the water ends and the land begins. Either way is dangerous.

Tamaracks

In the evening I am drawn to the tamaracks that bend and straighten in the wind like oarsmen pulling the long boat. It is only the longing to be safely dead, the desire for peace. But perhaps, even in death you would be restless, driving the back roads, a pocket full of change for the telephone, calling across the country at a terrible hour. I think that ghosts are the insomniacs among the dead. The only dead man I ever talked to told me that there used to be a tennis court where my house is now. “That’s right. I used to walk here in the evenings when I was a young man.” I was impatient. I said, “I want to hear what things are like for you now.” He said, “Oh, people always ask me that. Can you explain to a child what it’s like to be grown up? It’s the same thing. I can tell you this though: times change. I was a blacksmith but I had to get into small engine repair in order to stay in business.” “Oh, crap!” I said, and he vanished. The tamaracks accept the darkness just as the little pools of water accept the last portion of light. The air takes the water, leaving the road clear and dry.

Invisible

There are moments when a person cannot be seen by the human eye. I’m sure you’ve noticed this. You might be walking down the street or sitting in a chair when someone you know very well, your mother or your best friend, walks past without seeing you. Later they’ll say, “Oh, I must have been preoccupied.” Not so. At times we are caught in a warp of space or time and, for a moment, vanish. This phenomenon occurs often among children and old people. No one understands exactly how this happens but some people remain invisible for long periods of time. Most of these do so by choice. They have learned to ride the moment, as a surfer rides the long curl of a wave. How exhilarating it is to ride like that: a feeling of triumph to move from room to room unseen, with only the slightest breeze from your passing.

We’ve published Louis Jenkins’s work before. These poems are from his extraordinary first collection, An Almost Human Gesture, co-published by the Eighties Press and Ally Press ($8.45 postpaid from Ally Press Center, 524 Orleans Street, St. Paul, MN 55107). Highly recommended.

— Ed.