A Bowl of Silk

Scully peels the static curtain back
to Los Angeles, eighty-eight. The windows
are all open. October flies descend into the salsa,
the Reagans are nearly packed.

You can almost taste the pressure mounting,
the living room a woods of tall legs
through which i’m peering at a wood-paneled
television set, broadcasting a sullen Bulldog,
draped over the dugout like a soppy towel.

My father chews his fist, Lasorda sweats
and it rains in the suburbs. Lasorda sighs
and the wind howls up from the Ravine, the last
of the river is drying, the decade along with it.

Gibson hobbles to the box, neither leg supports
his frame, toothpicks under a boardwalk pier.
Every swing and America winces. Some can’t look
as the count goes full, all the fear of what might happen,
the awful knowledge that something must.

For an instant, the smog over downtown is pure belief,
freak energy in defiance of all odds.
I turn to watch the dog encircle his shabby pillow,
biding time for the right approach.

And every one of us is flung with that same velocity,
rushing and hopeful, splintered in improbable faith
and sent packing, shot like a bruised white star
sailing out over a packed parking lot.

Every night is the same story. The ground is laced with seeds; the staff is stuffed with notes, the sky a mess of black balloons. Neighbors in the distance cough expensive drinks up in the toilet. Their barking rounds against wet porcelain. Another balloon makes the sky fuller. It is difficult to imagine this life doesn’t go on forever. I found a shovel and decided on a spot to dig in the park. It would be as good as any. Four nights I spent sifting through the earth, in its layers of wetness and hard tissue. Small mountains grew behind me, watching quietly with the stars. I pushed the dirt back every time I abandoned the hole. Nobody thought anything about it; my neighbors reassemble their interiors in the bowl. They cry on the telephone and I become the floorboards to hear it. I want to know what’s happening. On the fifth night I hit something solid. The moonlight made it look like silver, but i am not a pioneer. Pioneers are buried under skyscrapers. I am buried under knowledge. Black balloons are contagious. What I found in the park were bones of things that used to walk. Everything we hide is still intact. The ground is laced with seeds. Nothing grows of its own accord. Another balloon makes the sky fuller. There is little room left to dig inward for peace.