{"id":9126,"date":"2009-03-05T06:46:23","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T11:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9126"},"modified":"2015-04-29T08:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T12:07:11","slug":"two-poems-by-carl-dennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=9126","title":{"rendered":"Carl Dennis, Two Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

I find him to be killer. Absolutely killer. The first one reminds me of what I was going through when I wrote this post<\/a> – the post that generated, hands down, the meanest email I have ever received (guess the douche missed the point, huh?), and it makes me think, yet again, that that, at their best, is what poets can give us: words and context and imagery to contain and express our deepest longings and fears, or even just our experience of everyday life. I read a poem like that and think, “Yes … yes … God, I know that …” Not that poetry should be all about reflecting YOU, and validating YOU … that would be a very provincial poetry indeed, but once in a while you come across a poem that nails<\/i> it, something that you spent about 1,000 words on your blog trying to describe … and he does it in seven stanzas. With economy and heartbreaking precision.<\/p>\n

In the Coffee Shop<\/strong> by Carl Dennis<\/i><\/p>\n

\nThe big smile the waitress gives you
\nMay be a true expression of her opinion
\nOr may be her way to atone for glowering
\nA moment ago at a customer who slurped his coffee
\nJust the way her cynical second husband slurped his.<\/p>\n

Think of the meager tip you left the taxi driver
\nAfter the trip from the airport, how it didn’t express
\nYour judgment about his service but about the snow
\nThat left you feeling the earth a tundra
\nOnly the frugal few could hope to cross.<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s best to look for fairness
\nNot in any particular unbiased judgment
\nBut in a history of mistakes that balance out,
\nTo find an equivalent for the pooling of tips
\nPracticed by the staff of the coffee shop,
\nAdding them up and dividing, the same to each.<\/p>\n

As for the chilly fish eye the busboy gave you
\nWhen told to clear the window table you wanted,
\nIt may have been less a comment on you
\nThan on his parents, their dismissing the many favors
\nHe does for them as skimpy installments
\nOn a debt too massive to be paid off.<\/p>\n

And what about favors you haven’t earned?
\nThe blonde who’s passing the window now
\nWithout so much as a glance in your direction
\nMight be trying to focus her mind on her performance
\nSo you, or someone like you, will be pleased to watch
\nAs she crosses the square in her leather snow boots
\nAnd tunic of red velvet, fur-trimmed.<\/p>\n

What have you done for her that she should turn
\nThe stones of the public buildings
\nInto a backdrop, a crosswalk into a stage floor,
\nA table in a no-frills coffee shop
\nInto a private box near the orchestra?<\/p>\n

Yesterday she may have murmured against the fate
\nThat keeps her stuck in the provinces.
\nBut today she atones with her wish to please
\nAs she dispenses with footlights and spotlights,
\nWith a curtain call at the end, with encores.
\nNo way to thank her but with attention
\nNow as she nears the steps of the courthouse
\nAnd begins her unhurried exit into the crowd.<\/p>\n

\nThe God Who Loves You <\/strong> by Carl Dennis<\/i><\/p>\n

\nIt must be troubling for the god who loves you
\nTo ponder how much happier you’d be today
\nHad you been able to glimpse your many futures.
\nIt must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
\nDriving home from the office, content with your week\u00e2\u0080\u0094
\nThree fine houses sold to deserving families\u00e2\u0080\u0094
\nKnowing as he does exactly what would have happened
\nHad you gone to your second choice for college,
\nKnowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
\nWhose ardent opinions on painting and music
\nWould have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
\nA life thirty points above the life you’re living
\nOn any scale of satisfaction. And every point
\nA thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
\nYou don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
\nWho tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
\nSo she can save her empathy for the children.
\nAnd would you want this god to compare your wife
\nWith the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
\nIt hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
\nYou’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
\nThan the conversation you’re used to.
\nAnd think how this loving god would feel
\nKnowing that the man next in line for your wife
\nWould have pleased her more than you ever will
\nEven on your best days, when you really try.
\nCan you sleep at night believing a god like that
\nIs pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
\nYou’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
\nAnd what could have been will remain alive for him
\nEven after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
\nRunning out in the snow for the morning paper,
\nLosing eleven years that the god who loves you
\nWill feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
\nUnless you come to the rescue by imagining him
\nNo wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
\nNo closer than the actual friend you made at college,
\nThe one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
\nAnd write him about the life you can talk about
\nWith a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
\nWhich for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.<\/p>\n

\n