THIS NEXT ONE IS
A SLOW DANCE
Not the dance of the sabers, mind you,
for that would need to be fast, or faster
and more spirited anyway. Sharper and
more pointed. Perhaps that. This is,
by contrast, languid and well-paced.
Dance Of the Sloths, perhaps. Or
something slowly falling from a tree.
(Although that can't happen, everything
falls at gravity's pace : steady and all
normal. Very sound down). I don't know
why I bring up things like that - which
are off the point, and one aside. That's
just the way I am with this discursive
or scattered matter : like the stream I
saw, just recently, by Phoenicia, NY.
Like any other mountain stream, it
wended its way along, between hills
and over rocks, maybe pooling where
it would. My pleasant dog went in.
I never know, by water temperature,
whether she will enter or not, but it
never seems to go by that anyway. It
was still warm and Summer-like out.
so, anyway, yes, she entered. Then a
truckload of Hispanics showed up,
Central Americans, or Mexican : you'd
think they never saw a dog in water
before - (though I'd figured they
surely did) - then they jabbered on
and away, in their skittering tongue,
taking photos of each other off rocks
and on logs. On rocks, and off logs.
Their truck was pretty nice; large and
shiny too. I couldn't place them for locals,
but, anyway, what's that ever mean in
days like these? People come. People go.
'La gente viene. La gente va.' I think it
would be. I'd found a nice walking stick
in the streambed, and with it went looking
for fossils and rocks. Water slimed about
me, gliding. I picked and poked and the
dog kept wading. Eventually, the Spanish
talkers left. In their big, loud truck. I hard
it for a long time, in a diminishing form of
country sound - a sound that travels far
and and lingers too, in those mountains,
hills, and hollows. Can't get away with
much in that regard. Though this is where,
it's said, Dutch Schultz had buried all his
money in the months before he died.
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