Daulatabad Fort, India, 2010.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
21 January
Get used to it
The salmon is chilly
by the time it’s traveled
all the way across the town
from the rally at the union hall
to the downpour on this picket line,
but it tastes like freedom,
and I swallow its stubborn flesh,
suck its determined bones,
then stumble from the brief warmth
of the strike trailer
into the shock of sudden night,
the dissonance of three
big brilliant picket umbrellas
pitched like circus tents
on the long blackness
of asphalt glittering
beneath the only streetlight.
Under the rain I begin to compose
the photograph I cannot capture,
I say the words out quiet:
“Remember, remember everything,”
then dive beneath
the startling blue and white
pie slices of Al’s umbrella.
“It’s a nice picture,”
I tell him, by way of explanation.
“Well, get used to it,” he says.
Twenty years ago today in Hoquiam, Washington, USA, the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers’ strike for equal pay for equal work against ITT Rayonier was ending in defeat. I had taken comfort on that picket line for the long months of my mother’s illness and on the night of her death. I knew it was time to go when we burned the furniture from the picket shack at the Ontario Street gate, then tore that rude structure down, but I wasn’t ready. I could still taste the chilly salmon, still see those umbrellas against the asphalt in the rain. I had gotten used to it, then it was gone.
The salmon is chilly
by the time it’s traveled
all the way across the town
from the rally at the union hall
to the downpour on this picket line,
but it tastes like freedom,
and I swallow its stubborn flesh,
suck its determined bones,
then stumble from the brief warmth
of the strike trailer
into the shock of sudden night,
the dissonance of three
big brilliant picket umbrellas
pitched like circus tents
on the long blackness
of asphalt glittering
beneath the only streetlight.
Under the rain I begin to compose
the photograph I cannot capture,
I say the words out quiet:
“Remember, remember everything,”
then dive beneath
the startling blue and white
pie slices of Al’s umbrella.
“It’s a nice picture,”
I tell him, by way of explanation.
“Well, get used to it,” he says.
Twenty years ago today in Hoquiam, Washington, USA, the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers’ strike for equal pay for equal work against ITT Rayonier was ending in defeat. I had taken comfort on that picket line for the long months of my mother’s illness and on the night of her death. I knew it was time to go when we burned the furniture from the picket shack at the Ontario Street gate, then tore that rude structure down, but I wasn’t ready. I could still taste the chilly salmon, still see those umbrellas against the asphalt in the rain. I had gotten used to it, then it was gone.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
19 January
Rhinos far and near
The Khmer word for rhinoceros – sounds like romias – was the first word I learned to sound out in my new language without ever having heard it spoken. It was one of those moments when everything stops for an instant, and I thought of another rhino far away.
I used to carry a grey plastic toy rhinoceros with me everywhere I lived: from various places on the South Coast of Oregon to a bungalow in that state’s biggest city to Asian Russia to Nicaragua to the southeastern corner of Poland.
The litttle rhino distinguished the place where I wrote from the first day in the 80s when it appeared in my writing room, a surprise from a housemate I’ve lost track of. Twelve years ago I took note of the shadow it cast on my computer in a different writing room, and one year ago, reading about that shadow in a different country, I found myself in a minor panic, scouring my tiny apartment, wondering where the rhino could possibly have gotten itself to.
I comforted myself, as I often do, by recalling what I had written about the missing item, in this case a prose poem:
Passive Resistance
A rhinoceros has come to stand on my writing desk, between the pencils and the paper clips. One of its ears is nothing but a ragged edge of leather; sand and pebbles chafe inside the loose folds of its skin. It looks at me with dull, unblinking eyes, the mute reproach of a wronged, uncomprehending creature.
It will not say why it is here; it thinks I know.
It will not go away; it thinks I can assuage its pain.
What will I feed it? Should I shoot it? What if it dies? Where will I put it?
It neither threatens me nor cowers from me. It is as patient as a stone in my skull. Whatever it wants, it will wait for. It is good at waiting: grey, heavy, sullen waiting. It will wait as long as it needs to. It is waiting now.
I remembered that the housemate who surprised me with the rhinoceros didn’t like the poem because he couldn’t imagine me shooting anything. It’s still a point of pride for me that there’s nothing I can’t imagine.
I thought I was lucky indeed the next summer when I found the toy rhino on my writing desk in the basement apartment where my worldly goods wait for me while I live everywhere else. Unwilling to risk losing something that’s been following me for twenty-five years, I didn’t bring it to Cambodia, but there was apparently a rhino-shaped hole in my life that the universe swiftly moved in to fill. There on the flash card for the consonant ro was a drawing of my favorite odd-toed ungulate.
My new, two-dimensional rhinoceros looks young, strong and peaceful, as if it has never endured a single misfortune. It stands in a field of grass against a pale blue sky, contemplating something mildly interesting in the distance. I don’t think it has noticed I’m watching it. I expect it will travel well.
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