Flight
Thinking that I would find you, thinking I would make the plane that goes hourly out of Boston I drove into the city. Thinking that on such a night every thirsty man would have his jug and that the Negro women would lie down on pale sheets and even the river into town would stretch out naturally on its couch, I drove into the city. On such a night, at the end of the river, the airport would sputter with planes like ticker-tape.
Foot on the gas
I sang aloud to the front seat, to the clumps of women in cotton dresses, to the patches of fog crusting the banks, and to the sailboats swinging on their expensive hooks.
There was rose and violet on the river as I drove through the mist into the city.
I was full of letters I hadn't sent you, a red coat over my shoulders and new white gloves in my lap.
I dropped through the city as the river does, rumbling over and under, as indicated, past the miles of spotted windows minding their own business, through the Sumner Tunnel, trunk by trunk through its sulphurous walls, tile by tile like a men's urinal, slipping through like somebody else's package.
Parked, at last, on a dime that would never last,
I ran through the airport.
Wild for love, I ran through the airport, stockings and skirts and dollars.
The night clerk yawned all night at the public, his mind on tomorrow's wages.
All flights were grounded.
The planes sat and the gulls sat, heavy and rigid in a pool of glue.
Knowing I would never find you I drove out of the city. At the airport one thousand cripples sat nursing a sore foot. There was more fog and the rain came down when it thought of it. I drove past the eye and ear infirmaries, past the office buildings lined up like dentures, and along Storrow Drive the streetlights sucked in all the insects who had nowhere else to go.
FOR ELEANOR BOYLAN TALKING WITH GOD
God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.
Eleanor, who is more beautiful than my mother, is standing in her kitchen talking and I am breathing in my cigarettes like poison. She stands in her lemon-colored sun dress motioning to God with her wet hands glossy from the washing of egg plates. She tells him! She tells him like a drunk who doesn't need to see to talk.
It's casual but friendly. God is as close as the ceiling.
Though no one can ever know,
I don't think he has a face.
He had a face when I was six and a half.
Now he is large, covering up the sky like a great resting jellyfish.
When I was eight I thought the dead people stayed up there like blimps.
Now my chair is as hard as a scarecrow and outside the summer flies sing like a choir.
Eleanor, before he leaves tell him ...
Oh Eleanor, Eleanor, tell him before death uses you up.
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