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9. The Case for Posthumous Present

Bell, Marvin

Fat twists down a rope like suet at the flaming end of the world.

There must have been someone here.

If not, who hung the rope, who made the noose, who climbed?

I was a teacher and could have said I knew but didn't.

Some of my colleagues knew everything, but I knew nothing.

I see now that even a strand of friendship was out of the question.

My early teachers thought Jews were cute, they liked it when I listened.

The years of need, the straw laundry basket, the hesitation of a wheel.

One can picture it in the past or look at it before its time.

I found that I was at home in the future, not in the present.

The proof of my having been born too soon arrived at water's edge.

Like many, I never went home for the night without a stop at the bay.

To see that it was there, to watch it shift its ponderous weight.

I heard it rumble into melody as it came to shore or ran away.

I heard the intervals of sea wrack tumbling through the tune.

The moon, then, was the cache of our romance.

It held us together as we hung from it, universal locals with high hopes.

How earthly the convenience of time and how great was our joy.

There was something there, beyond the quick.

More than just alive, we were possible.