Chapter One

ECLIPSED

The crimped beige of a book, turned-down corner.
The way an eclipse begins with the moon
denting the sun's liquid disk, taking a first bit
then more and more and. Leaving a regal rim, a dim
spared portion, a shiver. How cold she was
as the cloud covered the cuckoo-land,
birds batting the tree fringe. Fitful caprice.
Foolish, yes, they were, those birds, but clever too.
A nostrum of patterning rain had fallen
beforehand ceding the hibiscus buds bundled
and in disarray. In the news p. Nostradamic foretelling
of retinal damage written in novelese.
Wasn't the skeptic invented to nourish an interest in science?
Yes. The puma swallows the sun, only to spit it back out.
Diaphragmatic heaving. Base emetic act.
The puky little sun glowing to a glare. Puissance.
One's own right hand teaching one to look, to see, to leap
upon some notional premise.
Louise placed the next-to-night glasses on the table.
It is, she said, so over. But it wasn't.
Specters they would be
rooted eighty-two years in the same spot waiting
for another and then an offhand remark and one by one
(which is the way death takes us, he said)
they took their shadows
and went out of the garden and into the house.

SHE COULDN'T SING AT ALL, AT ALL

Louise said. No subtle cadences capturing birdnote
nor the melancholic "My Love
Is in a Light Attire." She could speak well enough
but to sing was to vivisect theear's dear pleasure desired.
Ham suggested canasta
or a hike to a hillock. The other reminded
no night-over camping—Lydia was soundly allergic to that.
Charles Gordon proposed
a boat ride to a big, big lake and a stroll
in the Parc d'Avenir. They heard an April angelus tolling its sixes,
a sure sign that the winter demon was down.
It was now a matter of waiting
for the haughty naughty beguilement of warmth.
They were standing on the balcony when
Louise was tossed not a rose or two with flayed edges
but an entire bouquet of hibiscus (a horde of bishops
huddling at the heart of each). Below them, a boy sweeping—
sheep, sheep, sheep—looked up
and souffled Lydia a kiss. Oh, it would be a good day, wontn't it?
Life flung riverward and on and on
the baby boat floating, spinning in the hope current,
someone singing "Sometimes a bun, sometimes only a
    biscuit."

THE DOG BARK

Louise peered into the corner of the cabinet
of fossilized delights: mandragon manikin, a dried mermaid,

assorted dog barks of crass appetites.
It was six and dark early. Don't forget numbers, Ham said,

are only examples: one and two with their sterile marriage,
three with its tattooed face. That year the gifts were lustrous:

a bear with the head of a horse, small nipples, flowers
in its ears. Louise said, Who doesn't love

the sound of scissor snips and free-for-all terms of endearment?
The dog, they named Lucky

To Be Alive, and refused to let it be altered.

BELLE VUE

Gorgeous that pillar, that post—both spiraled
with lashes of laurel. And between the two, four
couples fashioned past fumble.

The party wanted the night
sand to swallow their prints so they drove to the beach.
Back home, the filament blinked in the lamp

by which Louise sat reading a book about sleep.
Six knobs controlled the night but the day,
the day, she read, was rudderless,

an eggbreak knowing no bounds but becoming
an edgeless eye fluttering open at the sound of a siren,
a peony shaken—each petal a shower of instant truths.

Wake up. One wanted to hear
the sky—a river turned sidewise.
The wrist's tiny veinlets sunk

while gravity's gooseherd gathered the minion
capillaries. Wake up, wake up. The filament flickered again,
a forecast for certain. Sunrise would be
...

riddled with sound. At irregular intervals, rain.
The same letters one day would read
Charlotte; Charcot, the next; and then

charcuterie. Coincidence.
A grid over every window erased by the lack
of light.

In the everworld of art, even the lettuces' red leaves
stayed suspended between dissolves. Eye and idea, a rope
at the waist. She was held—

not by the text, but by the pretty pictures.

THE STAR'S WHOLE SECRET

Did she drink tea? Yes, please. And after,
the halo of a glass gone.
A taxi appeared out of elsewhere.

Five constellations, Louise said,
but only two bright stars among them. Soon, Ham said,
the whale will reach the knot of the fisherman's net;

the moon will have its face in the water.
And we'll all feel the fury of having been used
up in maelstrom and splendor.

Mother did say, Louise said, try to be popular,
pretty, and charming. Try to make others
feel clever. Without fear, what are we?

the other asked. The will, said Louise. The mill moth
and the lavish wick, breathless in the remnant
of a fire.

KISS, KISS, SAID LOUISE,
BY WAY OF A PAY PHONE

To the other who'd been left behind.
The city was unlucky in cloudy and chance of.
Routing the enemy, following a route.

What does it mean, Mary Louise,
that the mall in Midcreek will open in May?
They were getting away

to nature, conveyance as a form of diffidence.
Every avenue, said Ham, still ends at perception.
There is a point, said Louise, when one will act or won't

even know what she's missed.
She was wearing a wig and suit of blue serge
and looked somewhat like that section

of a symphony written in the alphabet soup
of C and B-neath. The road was a ribbon
on the bright canyon bed. Clever twin, said Louise,

to those who know how to follow
a scheme that avoids the end of the senses
before there can be a begun. She saw: a blue car leaving
...

at three; a blue car returning at four; an odd-looking man
leaning against an ornamental Japanese pine.
They stopped at the house on the top of the hill,

lit like a candle-house cake. I hope, Ham said,
there's a fire station deep in this forest.
Forest? What forest? she said.

Don't you see—
it's a fantastic sea where nothing but nothing can save us.

THE DIARY OF A LOST GIRL

Four diphtheria deaths, then fire, now five named lakes
with tranquil looks. Yet rampantly mad.
A lunatic shriek from a ruffian

child. One oar wrestled a mob of shore fringe, another,
the wet underbirth. And madness,
was it afflicted by demons? Or stricken of God? Or vision,

thrown on an empty mirror, and there you were?
Later, upstairs—the lakes packed away
in pearly cases, the coppery spin of a high skyward

arrayed against a leaded window—the chiasmic
question recurred. She recalled shy little lessons
from a girl named Renee on the unattainable freedoms

of the flesh. In the dining room, they would crumple
over the table like paper angels
if anyone raised an eyebrow.

Otherwise, they leaned against scenery—looking down
at their Bonniedale shoes
as if they were in love with nothing else.

Macular Degeneration
THE LATEST SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES AND TREATMENTS FOR PRESERVING YOUR SIGHT

By Robert D'Amato, M.D., Ph.D., and Joan Snyder

WALKER & COMPANY

Copyright © 2000 Robert D'Amato and Joan Snyder. All rights reserved.