My grandmother preached against gambling, and took gambles nonetheless. |
No great concern now to win, lose or advise, as I look towards you rolling dice over a towel; No madness adequate to replace myself with you, nor time to achieve the madness, though then you would be sitting with yourself, you and you, grandmother, and I would have the drive you claim for me. We both saw the transmutation of your regrets into my hopes; You hoped I would never regret, never forget that few people have choices, and that having them, I must turn down my right road quickly, the single one I can dance down, that you dreamed along, the unpaved path of flowers and a gleaming sky, art, music, drama: incongruously medicine. You spoke as though you pulled your words from a rift in the earth or a veil in the air, you spoke startlingly as though your whole existence were past tense, flimsy as dust scattered from an urn, decayed as a parent in the grave, or the broken windows of yesterday’s home. From careers the conversation moved to gambling naturally; your metaphor was brilliant; You had lost out a bit in the game, you were counseling that I had better odds. You found the addiction to dice and slots mysterious, the intensity ridiculous, the ups and downs drastic and dramatic. So I am counting cards subconsciously, grandma, in the game that you encourage and I love, beside the sky, blue as the Virgin’s robes, blue as Blanche’s blouse In A Streetcar Named Desire. I am counting cards beside the flowers flox, magnolia and anything that brushes my ankles, poison oak and ivy; What suits my memory, hearts, clubs, I remember: Outbursts of poetry, year-old scraps of insignificant Treasure; other people’s words, theories out of nowhere, with all echoes of voided chaos traded for a wild mix of threads invented, contradictory, grasped as literature, art, religion. I am counting towards infinity, grandma, counting out of order, inventing new suits and numbers, and I have counted you into my mind. |