Jack Scott writes

I, Mobius  

Ms. does not know  
she holds time on a leash. 
A walk in woods 
lasts as long as woods. 
Mushrooms do not melt away. 
One wades into amber willingly. 

I still walk beside you, as if you. 
You still walk beside me as if me,  
your arm around me, 
my weight upon your shoulder. 
We bear it . . .  
feathers.  

We cannot get there from here. 
(It is exactly two hours  
from my bed . . . . . . to your bed.) 
We cannot get here from there.  
(It is exactly two decades 
from your bed . . . . . . to mine.)  
I did not leave. You did not come.  
I begin the walk knowing its end.  

Soybeans soya  
We tread the hardest, driest ridges,  
neither hard nor dry,  
soft enough for sowing soybeans 
with our toes, 
more than damp, 
wet, 
well wet. 

Frost not yet having bitten 
is poised to strike. 
Yet, now, for us: calm, 
comfortable though soggy,  
this day.  

We veer right, 
Siamese compass points, 
pulled together  
more than by North, 
each forsaking direction  
for our notion of it.  

We have no destination,  
tugged perhaps by dark 
(hard to see in such soft light.), 
bent toward supper at the end, 
unhungered, starting out. 

We haven’t had forever, yet. 

The woods are not easy to enter. 
A moat intervenes, not perilous,  
but at the zoo it might keep things with teeth 
from biting you  

The way to cross is always 
ahead or through. 
The water lies perhaps  
eight inches deep.  
(on the average) 
Our boots are seven inches high. 
(on the average)  
Our still dry toes, 
overconfident, impatient, reckless, 
say what the hell, 
there are no alligators! It’s time to cross!  
At any place! Here ! Now! 
M.C.P. (me) I carry thee . . .  
(Water depth: ten inches 
on the absolute.) 
. . . into briars 
whose lace evokes a delicacy 
which isn’t there at all . . . . 
they bite!  

Without a map we find no door 
and, searching, find no key.  
Bulldoze we backwards 
through brambles into woods, 
bowing, bobbing, oddly graceful,  
(Twenty feet of barbed wire 
is now a single final briar.) 
suddenly we are free to rise -
levitation in a simple gesture 
fine enough to lift 
a tiny cup of China tea. 
We set each other free 
and straighten as we bent, 
orientally.  

We turn and enter Seikei 
winter wood.  

The maze has shredded 
our proportion; 
we have shed our size 
in these surroundings. 
We’ve dwarfed,  
now soybeans, ourselves, 
to, perhaps, a larger eye.

There’s no phone pole in sight 
to give these oaks a proper height, 
no squirrel ninety times the length of nut; 
the moat was deep as eye. 
On this farther shore 
we’re at the mercy 
of a higher sky. 
There is no airplane or other bird 
to give this sky a human scale;   

The pine that needled  
through the Fall 
and all the rest whose leaves 
have fallen short of South 
for winter  
have buried 
the measurement of masters: 
beer cans and other castaways,  
twelve inches to the foot. 
We’ve feet, but what’s an inch,  
some other kind of toe?  

Despite your father’s deed  
to this and all we can survey, 
dare we assert dominion 
on any terms?  

We do, as heir apparent, 
not own this place; 
we are guests of owning not.  

Succumb, says reason; 
Enjoy, says all the rest. 
Within these floral boundaries 
we are the only fauna here 
relying on each other only 
for the sense of what we are. 
Outside of time, 
as well as not to scale 
and out of sight, 
we know 
we could not have planned it 
better, 
and set about the job at hand.  

One does not find mushrooms 
until one finds mushroom. 
We search in haste to plunder. 
(first frost will waste the wonder 
like crystal guillotine.)  

Then . . . 
there’s one! 
its head still upon its neck. 
We catch it . . . Ours! 
wrest it from its ferny nest.  

Now, bent to mushroom height 
we see them plentifully 
through prisms of their lower air: 
abundant . . . a bonanza.  

One picks more quickly 
than one can later: clean, 
and sort, 
and cook, 
and eat, 
and more . . .

Two pick far more greedily 
than one and one. 
Later, maybe we’ll determine 
which is Icarus, 
and what is ick.  

Headstone furnished oaken parlor 
pallored:  
by spidery overhang, 
by squinting sun: 
anemic, 
almost none, 
by sea stunt rime 
an efflorescence 
enough light to lance the shade 
revealing shades within the shade: 
circle within circle, 
headstone ring, 
marble bible bookmarks 
inscribed once, 
erased, 
etched again: Anonymous. 
Lodestones 
drawing me as from a sore, 
or dream.

Still erect,  
I parallel the living 
as you lie level with all your rest. 
I could not read your ghost 
of chisel print.

I didn’t try,  
I didn’t pry 
- not through lack of interest - 
I respect the intimacy of death. 
Do what you will down there 
beneath your oaken canopy; 
I did not peek. 
Later, I asked, “Who? 
Your names were not familiar." 

I am at the end of pier 
Silent 
Mirrored 
Unbeheld 
Bobber 
awaiting fish 
or recall. 
I float on wood on water.  

I assist geese 
lifting from earth 
with my belief in flight. 
Supported by mists, 
buoyed by grays, 
drawn between this time 
and this place 
I disavow distance 
in any court of physical law. 
I am in contempt of gravity. 
I draw slender vowels from chimneys 
by the faintest consonance of air and lips. 
I weep, 
but do not frighten duck away.

This is stuck like music sticks, 
but this will never end. 

Mobius at the beginning, 
I am, at the end, Mobius. 
At the end 
you are leaving within me. 
In the beginning, 
I am entering within you.

We skirt the soybean field, 
traverse the moat, 
brazen the briars, 
molest mushrooms, 
séance a cemetery, 
plumb an endless pier . . . 
(That last was me, alone.)

The rest: my arm around you, 
through you, 
you equally surrounding me.  

A root, 
a seed 
toed 
into fertile mush 
a putty amorphous.

The distant chimney 
finesses a final sentence 
with an exclamation point 
(perhaps the chimney is near.)  

There is never again. 
There is only now, in handcuffs.

Here dog. 
Doggie doggie dog. 
Dog. 
dog. 
Abner, you’ve lost weight. 
NO! 
The scale beam is longer, 
More subject to error. 
I would not make you lose weight. 
I would not have you lose weight. 
You are the same, 
Abner. 
You still molest my knee, 
An expendable.

Instead of coming back 
and turning right 
(The house is always on our right; 
we are clockwise people.) 
I turn left 
for a long moment alone  
on the pier. 
You turn right 
into the house, 
into bronze. 
I remain lead 
upon the wood 
upon the water. 
I rummage through all my pockets 
and from them throw 
something . . . 
Midripple . . . 
plunk . . . 
lingers, until the end of  
dip 
dip 
dip. . . . . 
Waiting,  
I see the marsh, 
the woods 
are stippled with our footprints 
each 
with 
us 
still 
in 
,it 
all with us still in them. 

Office echoes quiet typewriter. 
Each day I eat half a lunch for two, 
far too much for one. 
You went all the way home for lunch, 
and dinner,  
and breakfast, 
leaving your pencil,  
and all of your correspondence, 
notes . . . notes. . .

. . . in the stillness of geese, 
who, risen above the earth, 
do not climb higher, 
and cannot fall, 
wallpaper the mind. 
I had many thoughts 
while you were in the house. 
I’ll tell you while we walk. 
I like your jacket . . . 
goose down.

Now we trespass marshes, 
evicting silence 
as water is evicted  
by diving into it, 
silence  
closing behind us like a wake. 
When we speak to each other 
the marsh absorbs it 
with all its other gasses, 
holds it like a breath.

Sanctuary doesn’t leak one drop 
of gossip. 
We’d better  
find some mushrooms though 
to validate our time away, 
(Virtue is only a mother away, 
and she quite near.) But, 
so long as we do not gather 
mushrooms, 
we do not have to go back ever, 
supper would forever stew.

We would own time, 
every way of it, but one.

But mushrooms do find us. 
Drawn by harness of collecting fingers 
we found what we sought, 
which ended the search.

What you don’t know  
is that when you turn right  
to leave our world, 
I turn left to stay within.

I enter the cemetery  
without knocking, 
respectful of your relationship 
with each other 
and with my friend - your relative. 
I do not peek or stare. 
I envy. 
A quiet gathering of peers,  
a loud intruder, however mute, 
who wants to understand 
before he joins you. 
Again we parted nameless, 
you, because I couldn’t read yours, 
me, because you couldn’t ask. 
Again I asked our friend; 
again she told me; 
again I forgot. 
Someday, I’ll learn to listen.

With no more feet than two, 
I occupy every other footprint 
we 
made.

Should we count the soybeans? 
Or weigh them simply  
in our minds? 
Numberless,  
they weigh nothing, untouched.

The joy, the pain 
of growth 
heal over like the field, 
forgotten like the crop, 
except for soybeans, 

crop droppings,  
tithed to furrows, 
persisting, 
a currency of time, 
escrowed 
until the time is come again 
for another go at it, 
another golden glint of green 
in God’s eye, 
another crop and its survivors.

Mushrooms - 
berries of decomposition: 
take them, take them all . . . 
try! 
You do not endanger mushrooms, 
you cannot arrest decay 
by plundering them  
from their hosts.

If sin was intended,  
none was committed. 
Ms does not know she holds time on a leash.

Abner, 
into the house, 
the parlor 
can be clearly seen 
through an open window 
from the end of the pier.

Ms is holding the phone,  
a shorter leash, 
(at which end is she attached?) 
and as she listens, 
and responds, 
a blackboard is erased, 
rechalked 
with smiles I’ve never seen, 
laughter,  
never heard.  

My end of pier is sinking.

Whoever I was, I am 
within the loop 
until you break the loop, 
let time fall limp, 
go flat 
with us still in it.  

Abner  
come out 
come

Here’s real mud 
and all the rest of it 
miles of scents, 
tracks, 
footprints.

There can be lead and bronze 
in memory, 
as well as things 
that have never been. 
All of memory’s elements 
can sink to bottoms  
of forgotten waters, 
or float on nothing 
more substantial than air.

Time never breaks, 
only clocks, 
and leashes, 
and Mobius loops.

You said you would remember me 
complete. 
I can’t remember 
a single set of footprints, 
only pairs. 
So how, for you, 
can I, as half a handshake, 
ever be complete?

Of all the weights of mist, 
of gray, 
of bronze, 
of mushrooms, 
of geese, 
three hundred pounds of us 
persist on separate scales, 
however nourished apart.

Three hundred pounds of memory 
will tend to lose some weight, 
however well I see in gray . . .

Here, You, 
Abner.  
I, Mobius  

Ms does not know she holds time on a leash