BLOCK
by Ellen Davis
When I turn the corner of my new favorite street—
it’s not far from you, you know it, it runs parallel
to Beacon on one side, the Green Line on the other—
I’m knocked out by the scent of cedar chips
in the petunia beds, piled high in squares
around linden trees. This morning’s walk helps me
to clarify and refine: for days, I’ve been uneasy.
I’ve been thinking about my friends and in what ways I care about them.
To mill through, to mull over—these farm terms
seem right for my sifting job. I finally got back
to walking after a few days of nothing but dull errands.
I couldn’t wait to stroll by the huge rhododendron
next door in the old man’s yard. Three days ago
it was green with a few plump buds; now it’s a magenta circus,
chartreuse helicopters from the maples spiraling down.
I like the sound of chartreuse. It sounds like
what it is—a deadly French drink, something Les Symbolistes
downed in their nights of drunken spendor. Mallarmé would have
loved it. I want to drink peppermint tea and write poems.
I want to live in our roomy, air-conditioned space ship
with no sounds coming in from the outside. I want
wanting Don to be “enough.” Instead I go crazy
about my friends: who likes whom better,
where they are going without me, why they don’t call me
all the time, why they are all better than I am.
You can’t live like that, can’t be in a perpetual state
of suspense about who’s doing what with whom
and who’s getting it. Another old man is standing
on the sidewalk examining the stubby azalea bushes
as I approach: Why don’t they blossom? He looks perplexed.
So the block helps to take it away from me, reminds me
of my home town minus the family and all
that it exacts. Staid as it is, this collection
of condos and small houses offers that sweet sanctuary
in which I can think. When I walk out in the morning,
I’m curious about the signs of life I’ll meet up with.
Today, between eight and nine there are very few:
Inarticulate murmur of the radio inside one house,
conversations verging into argument in another,
a baby’s self-satisfied squall. I’m thinking that if I turn
down that block often enough, I’ll see a FOR RENT
sign in one of those buildings. We’d be able to move
to the quiet, more fragrant street and escape all this noise.
You wouldn’t believe the racket produced in a place
where college students mix it up with Hasidic Jews.
I get back from my walk, back to the bed where my husband is
just waking, and the outside recedes, for a moment, for good.
Copyright © 2007 by Ellen Davis.