What Became
What became of the dear
strands of hair pressed
against the perspiration
of your lover's brow
after lovemaking as you gazed
into the world of those eyes,
now only yours?
What became of any afternoon
that was so vivid you forgot
the present was up to its old
trick of pretending
it would be there
always?
What became of the one
who believed so deeply
in this moment he memorized
everything in it and left
it for you?
Once, when cigarettes meant pleasure
instead of death, before Bogart
got lung cancer and Bacall's
voice, called "smoky," fell
into the gravel of a lower octave,
people went to the movies just
to watch the two of them smoke.
Life was nothing but a job,
Bogart's face told us, expressionless
except for the recurrent grimace,
then it lit up with the fire
he held in his hand and breathed
into himself with pure enjoyment
until each word he spoke afterward
had its own tail of smoke.
When he offered a cigarette
to Bacall, she looked right at him,
took it into her elegant mouth
and inhaled while its smoke curled
and tangled with his. After the show,
Just to let their hearts race and taste
what they'd seen for themselves,
the audiences felt in purses,
shirt pockets, and even inside
the sleeves of T-shirts, where packs
of cigarettes were folded, by a method
now largely forgotten. "Got a light?"
somebody would say, "Could I bum
one of yours?" never thinking
that two of the questions most
asked by Americans everywhere
would undo themselves and disappear
like the smoke that rose
between their upturned fingers,
unwanted in a new nation
of smoke-free movie theaters
malls and restaurants, where politicians
in every state take moral positions
against cigarettes so they can tax them
for their favorite projects. Just fifty years
after Bogart and Bacall, smoking
is mostly left in the hands of waitresses
huddled outside fancy inns, or old
clerks on the night shift in mini-marts,
or hard-hats from the road crew
on a coffee-break around the battered
tailgate of a sand truck—all paying
on installment with every drag
for bridges and schools. Yet who else
but these, who understand tomorrow
is only more debt, and know
better than Bogart that life is work,
should be trusted with this pleasure
of the tingling breath they take today,
these cigarettes they bum and fondle,
calling them affectionate names
like "weeds" and "cancer sticks," holding
smoke and fire between their fingers
more casually than Humphrey Bogart
and blowing it into death's eye.
SAVE YOU
If some afternoon you
should pass by there,
and the woman comes out swooping
her blue bathrobe back
from her path and crying, “Baby, oh my
sweet baby,” it won’t be you
she means, nor you
the hubby wearing motorcycles
on his T-shirt and jumping
down from the stairless
sliding glass door
says he wants to kill, so just
stand still. It’s the dog
they’ll be after, the shadow
under the not-quite sunk pink
Chevy, ratcheting itself up
with a slow, almost inaudible
growl into the biggest, ugliest
shepherd-Labrador-husky
cross West Central Maine
has ever seen. It won’t matter
if the two shirtless fat kids
come from around back with
hubcaps on their heads and shout
even louder than their father does,
“Queenie!” By then Queenie,
less a queen than a chain-
saw lunging at the potential
cordwood of your legs,
won’t know or care what
humans have named her. There’ll be
no hope for you, Pal, unless,
that is, the teenage daughter,
who comes across the front lawn’s
dandelions in her tank top
every so often to set me free,
releases you, too – shaking her head
as if only you and she
could see how impossible
her stupid parents and this uncool
dog really are, and lifting it,
like that, by the collar
to create a bug-eyed
sausage that gasps
so loud her mother gasps – not
that the daughter will care. “Mother,”
she’ll say, eyeing the sorry choice
of afternoon attire, “you should see
how you look.” Then, flicking
Dad out of the way
and renaming the creature
she’s created “Peckerwood,”
she’ll march as if she
herself were now queen
back through that kingdom
of California raisins and tires
and Christmas lights decking the front
porch in July, and past the screen door
with the sign saying This
Is Not A Door, to disappear,
rump by rump with a bump
and a grind to you,
through the real screen door.
* * *
On the soap opera the doctor
explains to the young woman with cancer
that each day is beautiful.
Hair lifts from their heads
like clouds, like something to eat.
It is the hair of the married couple
getting in touch with their real feelings for the first
time on the talk show,
the hair of young people on the beach
drinking Cokes and falling in love.
And the man who took the laxative and waters his garden
next day with the hose wears the hair
so dark and wavy even his grandchildren are amazed,
and the woman who never dreamed tampons
could be so convenient wears it.
For the hair is changing people’s lives.
It is growing like wheat above the faces
of game show contestants opening the doors
of new convertibles, of prominent businessmen opening
their hearts to Christ, and it is growing
straight back from the foreheads of vitamin experts,
detergent and dog food experts
helping ordinary housewives discover
how to be healthier, get clothes cleaner
and serve dogs meals they love in the hair.
And over and over on television the housewives,
and the news teams bringing all the news faster
and faster, and the new breed of cops winning the fight
against crime are smiling, pleased to be at their best
proud to be among the literally millions of Americans
everywhere who have tried the hair, compared the hair
and will never go back to life before the active,
the caring, the successful, the incredible hair.
* * * * * *
Why, Dot asks, stuck in the back
seat of her sister’s two-door, her freckled hand
feeling the roof for the right spot
to pull her wide self up onto her left,
the unarthritic, ankle – why
does her sister, coaching outside on her cane,
have to make her laugh so, she flops
back just as she was, though now
looking wistfully out through the restaurant
reflected in her back window, she seems bigger,
and couldn’t possibly mean we should go
ahead in without her, she’ll be all right, and so
when you finally place the pillow behind her back
and lift her right out into the sunshine,
all four of us are happy, none more
than she, who straightens the blossoms
on her blouse, says how nice it is to get out
once in awhile, and then goes in to eat
with the greatest delicacy (oh
I could never finish all that) and aplomb
the complete roast beef dinner with apple crisp
and ice cream, just a small scoop.
* * * *
It nods
behind me
as I speak
at the meeting.
All night
while I sleep
it stares
into the dark.
The bald spot
is bored.
Tired of waiting
in the office,
sick of following me
into sex.
It traces
and retraces
itself,
dreaming
the shape
of worlds
beyond its world.
Far away
it hears the laughter
of my colleagues,
the swift sure
sound of my voice.
The bald spot
says nothing.
It peers
out from hair
like the face
of a doomed man
going blanker
and blanker,
walking backwards
into my life.