"My Name in Water," "Adumbration," 
                  "Offering," and "Depth Perception"

                                  by

                              Cory Brown

                            Ithaca College
                          cbrown@ithaca.edu

                Postmodern Culture v.6 n.3 (May, 1996)

        Copyright (c) 1996 by Cory Brown, all rights reserved.
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My Name in Water

     The kids are in the bathtub screaming 
     and splashing, my wife on the phone 
     discussing a book on Australian aborigines, 
     whether we should even bother reading 
     literature anymore, and you would think 
     by the way I'm scribbling in the corner 
     I was trying to write my name in water. 
     But I can't even begin a poem let alone
     put the rhapsodic, quintessentially-barbaric 
     yet sumptuous touch on the last line -- 
     you know, the one with such transcendental 
     finality you would think the bard himself
     had risen to scribble out a few last, sad, 
     desperate lines.  Which reminds me of a poem 
     I heard had been found on the desk 
     of a college professor killed in a car accident 
     a few days before the last days of school, 
     when the forsythia are in full bloom 
     and tulips no longer purse their lips 
     for the kiss of spring.  The poem is entitled
     "Last Instructions to My Students," 
     which to me signifies a most profound joke. 
     I mean, it had been an %accident% for Christ's sake! 
     It's as if God himself were pointing
     to that title and saying, "See! see! 
     %This% is what I mean."  Which is to say, 
     folks, that life is so meaningful you simply 
     can't take is seriously.  Let me give you
     another instance:  it is a different day now 
     and spring is in full bloom; the tulips 
     on the side of the house have all been picked 
     by my four-year-old, little purple and
     white-striped tulips plucked in the innocence 
     of youth, and the sun is out now after 
     a brief storm this morning and there's 
     a lull in the day.  What I mean to say 
     is there may come a time, perhaps even today, 
     when I'll notice I had forgotten to do something 
     very important and then realize I had been 
     squandering my time writing.  Then
     like in a dream, I will remember the way 
     my two-year-old's hair curls up from his 
     head, and how he'll sometimes be swinging 
     in his swing with me pushing him, and off 
     to the side there will be a puddle 
     from a brief storm and I'll look over 
     and see the perfect reflections it gives 
     of the now cloudless blue sky, and I'll stare 
     into that puddle and not even think about my name.

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Adumbration


     I experienced the annular eclipse today
     as an adumbration.  As something extraordinary 
     I wasn't quite conscious of at the time. 
     You see, I had forgotten it was coming 
     and a rainstorm was moving in that hour, 
     so when it got very dark I sensed that this 
     was simply one of those eerie moments 
     when a storm blankets the sky to remind us 
     of the structure of normalcy.  Later, 
     when I dropped the lawnmower off, Al the repairman, 
     with his deep, sweet anchorman voice, 
     shaking hands, and whisky breath, 
     said he watched it through welding glass 
     and described the ring as moving around 
     the moon.  How charming, I thought, 
     and then I imagined the fury of that ring, 
     its enormity.  On my walk, the sun was 
     shining on the wet, fresh-plowed black soil, 
     and even the old cornstalks seemed to glow, 
     pale brown as they were and dirty in their 
     tired late spring appearance.  I was making
     my regular ring around the apple orchard 
     edged now with full-blooming pear 
     and cherry trees.  The tiny blooms
     themselves I thought of as rings of fragile tissue
     bursting with color.  My dog made her run 
     around me again and again and the sun 
     continued to pulse its brilliance down 
     onto the growing alfalfa fields, onto trilliums 
     in the woods, jack-in-the-pulpits and mayflowers 
     blooming or preparing to bloom; and down 
     onto cars and trucks on the highway, 
     bug-sized from where I was -- their little
     motors buzzing in the distance, the road 
     in the bright sun burning around the lake.

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Offering


     What am I doing?  Is it enough 
     to say I know, or don't 
     trust you?  What's wrong 
     with that, that you 
     would have to be relied 
     upon to know the question 
     is rhetorical and serious. 
     I'm barely alive to you, sometimes
     the poems says.  And I say 
     nothing, I can't help it 
     (the poem, that is). 
     That is how I am 
     keeping it all in hand.
     Half in hand and half getting 
     out of hand is how 
     to pass it along to you 
     in your life that I am 
     offering to myself, for you.

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Depth Perception


     So I was telling Creeley 
     how I once got a piece of chaff 
     stuck in my eyelid so each time
     I blinked it scratched 
     my cornea, but I had to keep 
     the combine going even though 
     I couldn't tell with just one
     eye how close the header was 
     to the ground -- no depth perception 
     you know.  I'll never know 
     how closely he was listening.


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