Basic Geometry
My dad and I went golfing out on Duck Creek,
a dried up farm course,
spotted every few hundred yards with lily pad greens
between hard clay and mangy cat-back fairways.
While I lined up a shot out from behind
a wave of pine trees, he told me,
"Remember! The ball is round,
but the box is square."
It might be the most profound thing
my dad ever said to me,
or it might be nonsense.
I looked over to him and asked, "What does that mean?"
"Anything can happen", he smiled back,
we both laughed, and called it quits after the front nine
on account of piss poor weather and, instead,
made ourselves near-sick on half pound bacon cheeseburgers
and a basket of deep fried pickle chips doused in vinegar.
The drive home smelled like a jar of gutter pennies,
and it reminded me that
there is nothing hotter than a woman's skin
after getting caught in a rainstorm:
Out of breath and flush
with the shock of cold water.
I suppose it's the PH level that changes the texture of flesh
differently than what comes in the city pipes and out the tap.
The poet Maj Ragain wrote:
A cistern can only contain.
A fountain must overflow.
If your heart is as broken as mine
you will hear me.
The sound of it reaches me like old thunder,
a dozen miles off, a silver crack against the sky,
off-duty gods drinking in heavenly bars.
What they pour into me is awake,
but I'm still hungover on some hard dream.
I've heard that hell
is like having a thin countryside,
hedged over, with worn out towns beyond
and a world, talked to pieces.
But I know better.
It sits willfully outside the distant colors
and materials of women's clothes:
Trees and flowers and shells,
the dark heaven, the wants,
the enlightenment, the gift,
and the light villains.
I've never been as whole as I think,
but the reason I get by is because
I'm fluent in the language of wholeness.
I can sleep in the pocket that its made of,
and tumble out through the bottom,
in the morning, when the world
puts on its blue jeans.
It turned out dad didn't think up that saying.
His friend from the Dominican Republic,
a man named Aris, had imparted this wisdom,
a piece of arcana passed down
from the Spanish speaking baseball wizards of old.
It has carved itself onto my tongue
as a mashed Latin rune:
The mind is square, it can only contain.
The spirit is round, and must overflow.
If your heart is as broken as mine,
you will hear me.
