Anxiety & A Boys' Own, with Queen
by John Barton
[ poetry - december 03 ]
Anxiety
Before I broke the window I was always on the inside looking out
- words excised from a notebook and ignored till now, till I look out
a window at this time of year, cracked panes jangling in the frame
the frame itself jarred by the first cold wind to lift from the river
winter oppressing me on schedule as it always does, these words
flags snapping at the Turkish embassy two doors down, twigs
fragmenting in the cold, the first shattered crimson leaves already
below my window, my shadow from this lit room anticipating
war, in Kurdistan perhaps, darkness cast across the premature snow.
Before I broke the window I was always on the inside looking out
thinking I had inside knowledge, thinking I had something special
or nothing much to say about what would change how things were
words cutting my wrist as I broke through the pane with my fist
doubt lodging instant shards below the skin, and numbness.
Every window that window. The anxiety. The severed nerve.
The river below exposed as a throat, its argentine integument
taut as a sail resonant with storm, dark clouds of algae flying
to the surface, mottled imperfections swirling into whatever ripens
and gets reflected back, my eyes never once clear and undisturbed.
A child face down in snow in Kurdistan, blood pouring from his mouth.
Before I broke the window I was always on the inside looking out
nothing let in until the airless seasonal rage of the unloved
lacerates destiny with sudden subconscious force, the numb
reality of wind. If I could, in my arms I would gather up that child
and run for cover across every artificial border, these words
I cannot forget, impossible bandages for his mortal wounds.
&bnsp;
A Boys' Own, with Queen
up the valley the locals call you the lads, never ask after kids and wives
when you pull in for milk or gas at the general store near the crossroads
driving from the city most weekends from early April on, for three years
arriving in the summer before heat condenses in a sweat over weary farms
your new truck flush with fauteuils scavenged from backroad dumps
and alleys from Renfrew to Osgoode, which you plan to recover in lush
reproduction chintz, a scarred chaise longue crammed among bedding
plants and stucco - the rococo touches have got the township talking
the schoolhouse abandoned for thirty years after the province rethought
how it wanted its children taught - and where - no longer in century-old
dowagers like this, presided over, until long past its prime, by normal
school alumnae who became engaged, letting it collapse among playground
lilacs and broken swings until you took it off the church' s hands, both of you
braced for transformation, no matter how many repairs itemized from roof
to cellar were unexpected, the brick and stone repointed, new cedar shake
fixed in place for decades of weathering to a tranquil grey that' s still
ahead of you, along with the septic field to be dug next year, running
water at last and power (locals watching from afar) the privacy you claim
for each other expansive within all this space, the one-room school squared
by communion rails into quadrants for cuisine and sleep while you joke
two men your age don' t want a family room, just a library for your merged
first editions, papers slowly assembled about the building still unordered
into a perspective as to where you fit, but fit you will, within rural histories
that would have chosen once to write you out - meanwhile you are last seen
hanging Pope Leo XIII, lately repatriated in full regalia from among the clutter
inside a shop of deconsecrated church antiquities back in town; a blank space
a light rectangle ghosted on the sooty plaster, awaits him above the black
board to the left of the shy early likeness of a queen whose uncomprehending
eyes look down upon you, not because she does not realize who you are
but because in this portrait she is not yet a widow and still feels young
