Grace, Fallen from. Marianne Boruch

she’d say,

      see? I remember the fifth grade, he said,

       those endless afternoons, don’t you?

      Not one, she said. They got quiet, the river

      on their left now, the water

      too low. The whole world

      needed rain. But she flashed

      on that strange little

      storefront in Oregon once,

      the counterman saying: why, there

      you are! I’ve been waiting a decade

      for you to walk in here.

      Then she was telling it, outloud, in the air. Probably

      a pick-up line, he said. What

      were you? 20? 22? Sudden click

      in her head, a double take, two

      exposures, one picture,

      the first shock of it back

      from the photo lab:

       and here I thought

       it merely some brilliant bit of the novel

      my life was writing. Did they pause?

      Because I hear him about to say:

      so you kept it, that’s

      funny. They walked on. A field

      opened up. Is that

       a song sparrow

      or a white-throat? he said. I can’t remember, she said, notes

      rushing downward but three clear

      hesitations before that great

      blurring. It got darker,

      crooked ash and ivy, an overgrown

      path where I stopped.

      Where the two of them

      kept going.

      NICE

      I can be nice. I can put my body

      flat, down straight, and pull

      sleep from somewhere deep

      in the brain, that no-weather

      thing, that blank page-

      after-page thing. I can be

      nice enough and say nothing, drift

      to the cool room under

      a blanket, under all the things

      I have to do. Count them. Count

      forward or backward: glue

      broken things, fill the feeder,

      work for a living, make supper, go

      anxious unto guilty unto

      anxious, full circle. I can love

      humankind. I can do that.

      I can close my eyes on the bright

      windows my neighbors have

      framing their big TVs. I can understand.

      I can be nice when others decide, steeling

      myself, but not as well as my tiny

      grandmother did, the tallest person

      in the room for a moment. I can, mostly,

      drive past Burger King, its Good Luck

      Staci (oh, Stacy with an i!) We Miss You!

      on whatever the marquee’s

      called now, be touched and sweetened

      or nice enough not to notice. And bite

      my tongue. Good doggy. Be nice now, be

      nice. I can sacrifice muscle

      and bone to sit longer, showing

      interest (show interest, my mother warned

      as we walked through any really large

      set of doors). I know German has

      a word, nett, for nice. I can put myself

      in that net, drop down so close

      to what is underwater

      that the fish know me as small,

      silent, as sleek and shiny as

      they happen to be. And so

      weightless there, blue

      beyond thought. One would hardly

      guess how nice it is, those fish

      suspended next to me, their mouths

      opening and closing.

      SEVEN AUBADES FOR SUMMER

       day one

      I read the roof next door. I read

      the shingles, their stony

      overlap, the stubborn look

      my grandmother gave me: I won’t

       walk that street. I hate

      those people. But she didn’t

      say that. I was a child. And to protect

      is to change the subject

      and leave the wound, only

      one of us

      staring down and down. So it was

      she clipped the brown glass

      to her glasses and we

      took a different route. Brick

      sidewalk, weedy grass. The shrug

      of a small town. And her steel,

      a flash of it. One bird out there

      can’t get over his song. To repeat

      is to remember. To remember is to go

      on and on. Anyway, my husband

      said this morning, throwing back

      the sheet.

       day two

      No one take credit. It came to me

      in a dream is all anyone

      can say. The dream of two sparks

      makes another spark. And if only

      I could think beyond and more oddly, this

      stolid whatever-it-is, this stanza

      a room, just a figure in a doorway

      about to leave

      or to enter. It was my mother

      come back to life, so much younger

      as I slept, plotting herself

      out of a marriage. So I finally

      witnessed it, the moment she opened and closed

      and opened. But how did it end?

      My standing there, my wanting to . . .

      And the sequel, her

      splintered