It was not smoke getting in my eyes;
More likely the third shot of Wild Turkey
In relatively short order
Which made my eyes a bit misty.
I had come up North to that cold cow country north of the Thruway,
Ostensibly to reconnect with the prospective love of my life
To start anew, to set things aright
(She was a grad student, Electrical Engineering
But not precise at all--she was mercurial, Plath-esque,
Prone to both epochs of silent introspection
And inexplicable spontaneous combustions of rage.
I heard later she’d dropped out of the program
Without a word to advisors or anyone else.)
It had not ended up hearts and flowers,
The breakup, which left feelings bruised and china broken,
Was both unpleasant and irrevocable,
So with an evening to **** before the next day’s flight
(Out of Ottawa, **** near a two hour drive)
I was haunting a bar stool
At the prototypical North Country townie bar:
An endless series of the owner’s cousins jamming on stage,
Several dogs wandering the premises
A veritable kaleidoscope of buffalo plaid
In shades of red, green, and gray.
In such places on such occasions, somebody ends up as your buddy,
Which is how I came to be doing shots with one of the regulars
Who listened intently, sympathetically to my particular tale of woe
Until such point he blurted out (if one can blurt something sotto voce)
I used to bone a girl in the nuthouse up in Ogdensburg.

The particulars of the liaison came gushing out like whitewater;
He’d been laid off from the Alcoa plant up in Massena,
And landed a temp job at the state mental hospital.
There had been, so he said, no shy romancing, no overt flirtation
(And as my drinking buddy pro tem put it,
It’s not like we could do dinner and a movie)
She’d simply followed him out to the trash compactor
And, the whining of cardboard
Going to meet its maker serving as cover,
They had simply let Nature take its course.

The girl was not like the other denizens
Of that particular soft-walled motel,
A broken factory-second of a human being;
Christ, she was beautiful, he lamented,
Red hair, skin like half-and-half,
Green eyes that ate you up and spit you back out again.
He’d never been able to figure out the attraction--
I was just a schlub guy who’d never had anything but schlub girls
But he said that she’d told him she loved him--no more than that,
He was her very salvation, the feeling mutual enough that he said
If I’d been there any longer,
I probably would have tried to bust her out myself.

He found out later that she’d been put inside for killing her old man,
Hacking him into dog-food sized bits,
Then walling up the pieces in her dining room,
But he insisted, slapping his palm on the bar,
Swear to God, even if I knew that
I would have risked sneaking her over the border anyway.  
I asked why he’d never tried to hook up with her on the outside.
He stared straight ahead for a few moments.  
I dunno.  I heard she hung herself, but I dunno.
We drank more or less in silence after that,
As there wasn’t a hell of lot more either of us could say,
And as I drove the sparseness of southern Ontario the next morning,
I said a silent thanks to whom or whatever kept me
From giving voice to the urge to express my respect and admiration
For any woman with the ability to hang drywall.

I understood I would never marry,
buy a house, have kids,
mow the lawn on Saturday,
wash cars, clean the pool.

I had an atypical plan,
thinking back, for my life:
a wanderer, adventurer or pilgrim
without want of firm roots.

Each destination a chance happening,
an introduction to the unexamined.
Sidewalks, cafes, alleyways, and life
being lived, journaled for remembrance.

The North Country, New York;
Watertown, Carthage, Clayton and Ogdensburg,
strolling their streets dripping
history and memoirs never told.

Lassoing thoughts from wild conversation
with caffeinated coffee shop poets,
struggling with Calvinistic thought streams
and priests in moments of doubt.

My theories in marble.
Gently chiseled with each interaction,
chipped, thoughts evolve
leaving inference among spilt beans.

All memories and dreams mingle.
l hold them gently.
As midnight creeps I’m untethered,
drifting from the shoal once more.


Suddenly I sense wonder:
The Appalachian Trail at Katahdin,
Continental divide at Loveland Pass,
Mount Hood from Pacific Crest.

Have you ever witnessed
views of Mojave’s Kelso Dunes?
Felt the Great Basin’s rainshadow chill,
or contemplated Joshua Trees in prayer?

Often the life of could have been
is more lucid than I am,
kneeling gnarled,
pulling obstinate weeds.

Shallow breath’d and gazing… scanning
my cut grass, clear pool,
a loving wife, adoring children,
my home…

This man,
mind wandering,
acquiesces,
to clarity of thought.

I would have… could have
been that man, that other life,
a Walter Mitty dreaming
a life; mine.

She is there at the water’s edge
Most any day she can wheedle and whine her mother to the water,
From the intermittent teasing warmth of late March
And all through the languid North Country summer
Until such time she is there,
Mitten-clad and scarf-wrapped like some miniature Tut,
Bracing against January’s razor-blade winds in those last few days
Until the few gurgling rills and streamlets are nothing but ice
All the way up to the big river in Ogdensburg.
She scrambles down to the bridge abutment
Hard by the Riverside Cemetery
Dropping a Popsicle-stick craft
(Its sails snips of cloth or bits of green-bar paper,
Its cargo a message stapled into a sandwich bag)
Into the river, sent on its way
With a brief and whispered benediction.
Most times, the craft founders almost immediately,
Taken under by a sudden gust of wind or large stick
Perhaps a carelessly tossed forty-ounce Hamm’s empty,
But on occasion the boat will stay upright and precariously totter along
Until it slips out of sight past the bend near the hospital,
And she claps her hands, convinced that yet another one
Is on its way to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the great blue ocean.
An onlooker might cluck and shake his head,
And tell her that such a toy
Would never make it outside the village limits,
Certainly never past the big bridge on Route 58 at Elmdale
Or the one further on up past Pope Mills,
Let alone to the Seaway,
But he might check himself, perhaps sensing
That there had been disenchantment
For one life already,
So he might instead make gentle inquiries
As to what messages are carried in the plastic baggies.
She would (her voice all mock-sterness though the eyes betray her)
Answer simply That is between me and the angelfish.