The metaphor is almost,
no--
is too obvious.
This man who sounds like my father,
over the popping and crackle of a phone that's needed replacing for years,
tells me he feels fine.
The biopsy revealed
he has silica in his lungs.

Silica, in little paper packages:

in the toes of patent leather church shoes
with "little bitty buckles" his heavy hands could barely fasten
(as I brushed my cheek on his stiff collar--
Old Spice is almost,
no--
is too obvious now);

in molds, I think;

in countless nooks, crannies, and doll boxes;

to remove moisture?

The disease is shaped like honeycomb,
as though, somehow,
it thought we need

a reminder.

We already know these things.

Sylvia Plath was given a beekeeper.
I close my eyes
and see the man on stage,
spinning plates on sticks depend on his encouragement.

Honeycomb lungs for the man
who went to work on the morning of my wedding day.
He occupies my words as
wrenches and lathes:

Metaphor becomes useless with only the thing.

--October 30, 2004, sitting on the ground in Tomorrowland.

As I was shuffling around the entire section of tv/movie star biographies at work today, a man came up and started making polite conversation with me:

Wouldn't it be great if you could just internalize all the material in books just by touching them?

I nodded.

I'd just shelve books all day long.

Of course, I didn't have anything terribly interesting to say in response, so I just agreed and kept working. And then he asked how I got the job. Did I have a background in English? Was I from Kentucky originally? Why didn't I have an accent? What did I study? Rita Dove? Oh, yes, National Poet Laureate. Mhmm. Had I read much Wallace Stevens?

He had done graduate work at NYU. He was talking to me because he was in the store...selling his books. Because he has no job and needs money.

Selling your books because you need the money...

How does it go? Go to grad school and make yourself even more unemployable?

I want to keep the plates spinning, Dad. And I want to add more.

If I could only realize in "real life" the excitement I feel over being able to bring up in casual conversation that Ted Kooser is from Nebraska... Or even that I know who he is.

I don't know. Maybe I'm asking for too much.

I just keep going back to that image of the homeless man in Boyle Heights pushing a shopping cart full of books. Hold out. Hold out 'til the bitter end.

Labels: books., family., school., work.

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