And Then at the Boat Show
It is true, I feel, that I don’t think about plants
as much as I should. Day after day, the explanation unfolds,
at just the pace to keep you interested
while at the same time to keep the thread just out
of your grasp, so you’re never quite sure how much longer
it will go on, or what, if anything, is being explained.
These boats approach those. They all do
circles. They run close. Along the bank, there’s a car show
in rows of popcorn and hotdogs, Skyline Drive
and arrows toward the mountains. We’ve not heard of a lot of things,
all of which, we’re sure, are brimming with little cries
and glamour. There must be something,
something practical to it, like breaking eggs to make
chicken soup, and then ordering take-out,
leaving our weekends free for new, more esoteric problems
regarding horticulture, or just culture in general.
Maybe it’s all just one of those burnt retina tricks,
where you stare at green and yellow stripes
until it becomes the American flag, or else it takes on
a figurative glow about the edges and pulls away from the scene
of the young couple at the wedding ceremony
in the field under the trees, so that they can hover a bit
over the celebrants, holding hands, and knowing this
is all just another part of the formal constraints,
like Texas, or mother-of-pearl.
There’s the hope that we can extract general principles
from it, something to bring back to the boat show,
so that there’s a surety to things. A late-night
telephone call. And we’re always rehearsing something
at the rehearsal dinner, we just don’t always know what. I don’t want
to miss anything, of course. And you don’t want to miss anything,
especially the truly unexpected things
that come about ¾ of the way in, around page 90. In the pictures,
we’re always idiots with cummerbunds and lace. We never
stood a chance, knowing our limitations as we do,
and the way shadows pull the mountains over us.
Read the Rumpus Review of John Gallaher’s Map of the Folded World.
