By the Numbers. James Richardson

supposed to do.

Echo

      And since she could only say back what she heard,

      she had to listen for what she needed to say.

      She haunted the edges of schoolyards first. Not it.

      Lovers’ lanes: hopeless. Cell phones seemed promising,

      but really. She started reading novels

      to put herself in the way of secret lives. It was the old story,

      speed that was made to be followed, not repeated:

      she remembered the ends of sentences, of sentences.

      Why hasn’t anyone said…? she thought, but couldn’t say it.

      What I want is… lilies in time-lapse bloomed, faces, explosions,

      which she tried repeating. Stares, curious at least.

      And if it had never in all history been uttered

      would accident help her? She tried mishearing

      flags snapping in darkness, the rumble of subways,

      misquoting the birds even, two-wit, twang-a-wire, sorry-sorry.

      Not quite, but there was something deep within them:

      hadn’t it been there at the world’s beginning,

      a silence? Yes, she could hear it still. It was like,

      like a dumbstruck boy who looked at her as blankly

      as if she were a pool, or he was, it was a question

      spreading out larger and smoother, time itself,

      to which she could hardly wait to hear her answer.

Bit Parts

      In that monster epic of the checkout girl

      I’m the guy setting groceries on the belt

      in order of decreasing density, or maybe the one

      whose Did you get that coupon? is the last straw,

      so she streams out, shedding her smock, through automatic doors.

      In that later movie of the two old friends

      stopped dead in the whitewater of the crowd

      with sudden love, I’m the Excuse me sidestepping them,

      or the waiter they hardly see, clacking down two plates

      with tolerant amusement, which is my specialty.

      And in the film of the autumnal Liebestod,

      I’m the guy sliding her the desperate ticket,

      the arm hailing a taxi against the sunset,

      the blink of a bike going by. If you notice me at all

      you never ask Who is that? just

      What else was he in? since I am small, and they

      are large, these lovers, comets, and so swift,

      fast-forwarding their whole lives in two hours,

      hair blown back, that their whispers, stooping to us,

      would be sonic booms, their hot touch catastrophic.

      I sit, hand on your arm, as the Wave of the Century,

      some poor lifeboat poised on its crest

      like a sparrow lost in the whited-out sky,

      collapses, a terrible powder of light

      against the screen, roaring, leaving us dry.

      I’m the abrupt laugh, or the back of a dark coat

      up which, like rain on a windshield, climb the credits.

      I am that faint curve graphed on the sand

      in wrack and paper cups and foam that shows,

      as the light comes up, how far the night had risen.

The God Who

      It was the small gods we talked to

      before words, though soon enough

      we forgot, and sadly, that what dawn

      or the shine of hips made the heart do

      was prayer.

      The god of a particular

      slow bend in the river, his friend

      god of the white boats swung around it,

      gods of moderately impressive rocks,

      of spots warm where someone was just sitting,

      of the deep sharp scents of shoes, of sounds

      whose direction is unclear, of silver linings:

      they appreciated whatever small appreciations

      came their way and, ignored,

      were not so much vengeful

      as doubtful in that early world,

      where the workload, if it can be called that,

      of their divinely inefficient bureaucracy,

      left plenty of time to enjoy the specialties

      of their fellows, god of just sitting around,

      god of the nasty slider, of low-battery gleeps,

      of wine that gets better by the glass,

      the god (the high god!) of too excited to sleep.

      Actually, with considerable power

      over one thing, or a couple—a book maybe,

      tennis, unusual salads—but only average

      at, say, getting lovers or starting a car,

      they were a lot like us. Distinctions, in fact,

      were not rigidly maintained, it being proverbially

      difficult to be sure you’re immortal

      or that you’re not. There was intermarriage,

      bargaining, and respectful confusion (once

      language got going)

      about what constituted worship

      and what was just delighted

      saying of the names of things,

      which persists. So as for the god

      of the squeak of clean hair,

      of your hand out the car window

      wind-lifted, of the small shades under hat brims

      and not excluding

      the banned gods of leaf-fires and tobacco,

      oh and definitely including

      she of the coffee-breath and fine cold hands

      who says Sit down friend and let’s see,

      let’s just see, and certainly

      my other god, he of Least Resistance

      who decrees what is going to happen anyway,

      who listens only to prayers that end

      Let all be as Thou will’st, who grants

      only my wish to believe in him,

      and with the possible exception only of the god of making a list

      of all the other