Fall 1972
Four of my father’s wives lived at Provo during my childhood, a situation particularly fortunate for the swarm of Taylor kids. Santa Claus came twice to us, instead of just the single time he visited…
It isn’t that way now. The quiet fields are broken into building lots and the farmers build jet engines in the city and garden with a roto-tiller after work. The old canal is lined with concrete and in the center of the town the Saturday and-sun-drenched baseball diamond has shrunk to softball under lights, and the county has built a tennis court just off third base for a game the kids are beginning to learn to play in white shoes.
When the iron works was shutting down
and you couldn’t buy a sack of flour
in Cedar Valley at any price
(grasshoppers we had—but no gulls),
the Lord sent mushrooms.
aged ten,
walked, starved, froze
with the Martin Company
and left her parents in shallow graves
near the Sweet water.
Leaves of a different cut,
perceiving other winds,
the children blow in spring
and laugh aloud like children.
Reading is one thing—and metaphors
imitate life in literature only.
Yet when birds flapped a curtain of chatter over a sky-scrap
I have made endeavour to serve thee, Lord,
and yet thy servant—
this thy child—
is apprehensive at thy majesty.
These are fragments of myself
playing at being fragments of myself
and they will become fragmented themselves
as like me they become themselves.
The common cripple to the south of Palmyra
Dreamed God the Father, the Savior Son,
And, though clerical tradition predetermine his doom,
Can never, never, never
Search Kidd’s treasure again.
The men of Huntsville proper
Found her there—
Halfway down the Glacier’s eastward face
With three thick feet of glacial glass
She eased herself into the bed beside him,
His farmer’s heavy sleep
Was lighter now with dawning near.
At the creak of springs he stirred
There has been one and one only perfect moment
when the awful machinations of chance completely and smoothly meshed,
each part moving in single precision,
when the intricate multiplicity of myriad circumstance,
The darkness said tyranny!
And poured inward, defining
The breeding swirl of chaos
For the scarabaeidae of time.
The absence of light became
My prayer of darkness, skeining
And reining:
I am that I am,
