Then I was walking in the garden looking for the intermediaries
between me and the clear light. Clouds of gauzy gnats flew up
and drifted in the buttery air. I had left the green hose running
much too long, and the earth was quenched and sagging under
the sweet peas. And something had been chewing holes in
the ear-soft leaves of the morning glories. Then I saw for
the first time that the neighbor was growing corn. The yellow
shocks were leaning just above the cinder-block fence, and they
looked so delicate and scruffy, like city corn, like alien corn,
and suddenly there was so much to be done, so much to put
in order—not the ordinary business of living and dying, but
the ordinary business that comes bundled with them. Sunlight
behaved perfectly in every corner. The shadows breathed in their
one direction and told stories. The cat crouched in the flower bed
aching to kill something. What is a man to do in such a moment?
When he knows he’s being fooled by Heracletean fire and all
those old and hopeful ideas about the moral jewel in beauty?
I mean in this day and age? I mean now when no one can even get
those equations to hold up anymore? And the ants had formed a black
ribbon that led to a dead snail. And the Pipers and Cessnas
and Beechcraft were circling for the airport with so much color
and precision. And the dogs two houses down heard the mail-
carrier’s foot and erupted. But this is not the answer I’m
looking for. And I have been lazy. Tangerines and lemons and
mandarin oranges have swollen and dropped from their impatient
branches. They lie among the fern and the vine, bruised and mushy.
They are being swarmed. They are being devoured.
Frank X. Gaspar
2004
