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Even
in midday the stars shine
when
viewed from the bottom
of
a well. I once saw
Arcturus
in
the afternoon, brilliant splash on blue.
The
telescope of one who knew
where
to look showed me.
We
sought out Venus at dusk
through
our little toilet paper tubes.
I
rarely try to find light on light
since
such precision is required
to
change the mind of heaven.
But
once I made a long journey
to
the Andes to watch the moon
cannonball
its shadow across the high desert,
then
dare to rub out day bit by bit.
With
a sudden gulp, then,
it
turned the heavens deep and dark,
studded
sky with all the rhinestones
I
only pretend to believe are diamonds.
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There
was always an element
of
the pathetic, pallid as the Host
on
the tongue, in my dreams.
I
fake-limped, imagined staggering
out
of my wheel chair to box down
the
robber who came to steal
from
us 4th graders. Pencils,
maybe.
He
couldn't take lunch money,
as
we all walked home to eat.
Too
much Tiny Tim and Beth,
I
suppose, and fainting Victorian
I
did manage to faint a couple of times,
messy
moments of blood
and
shattered teeth, not romance.
I
sometimes limp now
from
bone that grays and rots,
is
cut away. But swoons
and
lameness proved less heroic
than
I supposed. Brooding
Raskolnikov
and
consumptive Chopin found
their
loves. But a girl, a
girl must dream
a
fine line, then walk it.
Carol Hamilton is on the graduate
faculty of the University of Central Oklahoma. She became Poet
laureate of Oklahoma in 1995 and received the Oklahoma Book Award
for a chapbook of poetry, Once The Dust, and won this year's David
Ray Poetry Award from Potpourri.
 
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