Brian Doyle, "The child as verb"

My heart yearned for this today. Talk about soul food.

Go to the original post here

Home » January - February 2006 > The child as verb NON-FICTION The child as verb BRIAN DOYLE APRIL 21, 2006 I was shuffling along the roaring shore of the misnamed Pacific Ocean, humming to myself, pondering this and that and t’other, when I saw a crippled kid hopping towards me. She was maybe four years old and her feet were bent so sideways that her toes faced each other so she scuttled rather than walked. I never saw a kid crippled quite like that before. I thought for a minute she was alone but then I noticed the rest of her clan, a big guy and two other small girls, probably the dad and sisters, walking way ahead. The crippled kid was cheerful as a bird and she zoomed along awfully fast on those sideways feet. She was totally absorbed in the seawrack at the high-tide line—shards of crab and acres of sand fleas and shreds of seaweed and ropes of bullwhip kelp and fractions of jellyfish and here and there a deceased perch or auklet or cormorant or gull, and once a serious-sized former fish that looked like it might have been a salmon. In the way of all people for a million years along all shores she stared and poked and prodded and bent and pocketed and discarded, pawing through the loot and litter of the merciless musing sea. She was so into checking out tide treasure that her dad and sisters got way out ahead of her and after a while the dad turned and whistled and the crippled kid looked up and laughed and took off hopping faster than you could ever imagine a kid that crippled could hop, and when she was a few feet away from the dad he crouched a little and extended his arm behind him with his hand out to receive her foot, and she shinnied up his arm as graceful and quick as anything you ever saw. She slid into what must have been her usual seat on his neck and off they went, the sisters pissing and moaning about having to wait for the crippled kid and the dad tickling the bottoms of the kid’s feet, so that I heard the kid laughing fainter and fainter as they receded, until finally I couldn’t hear her laughing any more. But right about then I was weeping like a child at the intricate, astounding, unimaginable, inexplicable, complex thicket of love and pain and suffering and joy, at the way that kid rocketed up her daddy’s arm quick as a cat, at the way he crouched just so and opened his palm so his baby girl could come flying up the holy branch of his arm, at the way her hands knew where to wrap themselves around his grin, at the way the sisters were all pissy about the very same kid sister that if anyone else ever grumbled about her they would pound him silly. And this is all not even to mention the glory of the sunlight that day, and the basso moan of mother sea, and the deft diving of the little black sea-ducks in the surf, and the seal popping up here and there looking eerily like my grandfather, and the eagle who flew over like a black tent heading north, and the extraordinary fact that the Coherent Mercy granted me my own kids, who were not crippled, and were at that exact moment arguing shrilly about baseball at the other end of the beach. I finally got a grip and set to shuffling again, but that kid stays with me. Something about her, the way she was a verb, the way she was happy even with the dark cards she was dealt, the way she loved openly and artlessly, the way even her sisters couldn’t stay pissy but had to smile when she shinnied up their daddy’s arm, seems utterly holy to me, a gift, a sign, a reminder, a letter from the Lord. In my Father’s house are many mansions, said the thin confusing peripatetic rabbi long ago, a line I have always puzzled over, yet another of the man’s many Zen koans, but I think I finally have a handle on that one. What he meant, did Yesuah ben Joseph of the haunting life and message, is that we are given gifts beyond measure, beyond price, beyond understanding, and they mill and swirl by us all day and night, and we have but to see them clearly, for a second, to believe wholly in the bounty and generosity and mercy of I Am Who Am. I am not stupid, at least not all the time, and I saw how crippled that kid was, and I can only imagine her life to date and to come, and the tensions and travails of her family, and the battles she will fight and the tears she will shed, and I see and hear the roar of pain and suffering in the world, the floods and rapes and starvings and bullets, and I am too old and too honest not to admit how murderous and greedy we can be. But I have also seen too many kids who are verbs to not believe we swim in an ocean of holy. I have seen too many men and women and children of such grace and humour and mercy that I know I have seen the Christ ten times a day. I think maybe you know that too and we just don’t talk about it much because we are tired and scared and the light flits in and around so much darkness. But there was a crippled kid on the beach and the Christ in her came pouring out her eyes and I don’t forget it. In my Father’s house are many mansions, said the Christos, confusingly, and then in his usual testy editorial way, If it were not so, I would have told you, and then, in a phrase I lean on when things go dark, I go to prepare a place for you. But we are already in the doorway of the house, don’t you think? Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author of six books, among them the essay collection Leaping (available in Australia through Garratt Publishing) and a musing on hearts called The Wet Engine (through Rainbow Books in Australia). You can email him at bdoyle@up.edu

How easily I

fall
     into
           slumber

trying to dream of you.

                                 I haven't yet

                                                       dreamed
                                                                         of
                                                                                  you;

maybe I don't have to
                                  meet you
             on an imaginary plane
                                        to see you as you are
 
             

                                      (or as you will be).


For all the times I crouched by the kitchen sink (begging to be believed),
for all the times I believed, handing over everything to the Freddy Krueger of my waking life,
for all the times I couldn't stitch together my rag-doll heart without weepy British guitar telling my story,

I walk softly here.
                            I walk softly
                                                 as
                                                    falling
                                                             snow
                                                                    glides in on Christmas morning.

I walk slowly here.
                             I walk slowly
                                                    as a
                                                            speckled
                                                                            fawn
                                                                                     tip-toes into the open meadow.

I walk silently here.
                               I walk silently
                                                     as an
                                                             astounded
                                                                              ladybug
                                                                                            wanders the contours of a human hand.


Even so,
how easily I find myself

       
                                        f
                                          a
                                             l
                                               l
                                                 i
                                                   n
                                                      g
               
 
 into
           slumber

trying to dream of you.




                                               
                                                 

Corrina Bain, "Girls Putting on Make-up On the L Train"

I use two types of mascara to get my lashes just right. I wonder what C. Bain would think of that.

Girls Putting on Make-up On the L Train

Two of them are seated next to each other.
One black, one white.
One of them painting a Russian stripper
onto an Iowa cornfield. The other,
laying out powder to deaden to mud the
dewy pleading of her face. From the brush,
she switches to a tiny, fuzz-tipped want,
sodden with gloss, to shape her mouth.
The other, prying her eyelashes away
from the socket with a small sooty comb.
In this way we pass, lurching,
under the water between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
In this way we leave home and prepare for empire.
They have the look of experts
arriving at the scene of a wreck.
Impervious to the hurling speed, the rails'
sudden unevenesses. Ready. Ready, now.

Sharon Olds, Topography

This is one of my favorite poems. It's simple, beautiful, magical and yet so tangible and real. 

I long for this. 

I am moved to share this poem in honor of one of my best friends on this whole entire planet, Kellie, and her newly returned missionary Matt. I am so happy you two made it to this point.

We are all so excited for the future. 

(I realize this poem may be too risque to honor an LDS missionary homecoming, but you know how I do.)

Topography

After we flew across the country we
got into bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

— Sharon Olds, The Gold Cell, Knopf (1987)

I thought my heart was in Patoka Lake

But when I hold my breath under every overpass 

or bridge 

or tunnel 

anywhere a wish might be hiding 

like a cavity that has not yet begun to ache 

My mind's eye returns to

the air fresheners and the candles,

the florescent lights blinking, 

the way I laughed at my own un-made mind,

and 

how easy it would be to get used to

that particular brand of exasperation in a man’s eyes. 

12 Hours in the Echo

All the sagebrush
mile after mile
the long grass, the desert trees;

Ranchero Caistas on the left
inky-maned tawny horses grazing lazy
behind the fence.

Only 17,  she drives banshee wild.
I almost tell her to pull over

so I can pick wildflowers,
trade seats,
throw myself in front of a car...

Let's not derive meaning from the
crows nest in a dead tree.

Hearts of cactus,
we let Prince, Whitney, Madonna do the talking.

Dante Ocariz

This week's (belated) feature poem is by a resident of the Phoenix area and considers himself "Bukowski 2"--whatever you choose to make of that is your deal; I choose to enjoy it for what it is and giggle politely at what it is not. 

Bad cockfight in Tijuana

Several pot-bellied cowboys stand over the dead body of a fighting cock

I had 50 dollars on.

A few laugh while others count their winnings.

The owner of the bird removes the steel spurs

and hands it to the winning team as a prize 

then walks off.

the scene empties with the last of the spectators

hitting the bar for shots of mezcal.

I'm left alone staring

at a once tough

champion with an eye missing. 

The wind mockingly plays

with his raised feathers

and covers his wounds

with the dust of the street.

The blood dries quickly

but the memory of his failure is fresh

in my empty pockets.

Shit .

I thought we both would make it today.

But it was luck,

pure luck,

theirs

not ours.

And they all leave

with whatever you gave them.

you

dead with a snapped neck

and me

lost in Tijuana

with no bus ticket home.