Green Linden Press

Ode on Time, Bach, and Our Heart’s Desire

I’m sitting in the hall above Orsanmichele 
in Florence, the room that houses the sculptures
that used to stand in niches at street level,
the apostles and saints carved by Donatello
and Ghiberti, and my favorite, Nanni di Banco,
who died of the plague in Rome 
when he was in his twenties, like Keats so young
and filled with longing, but he left no poetry
only these figures and the Porto della Mandorla
on one of the side doors of the Duomo, 
but tonight there’s a concert in this hall, the first piece 
by a young man who is sitting on the front row,
and it’s short but intense, followed by Bach,
two Brandenburg concerti, and in the second
movement of the fifth concerto, I think, 
not for the first time, the harpsichord 
is like a beautiful baroque wasp, and when the flute 
and violin are twining around each other like lovers
embracing on a summer’s evening, the wasp is buzzing
around their heads, but they are so in love
they don’t even know it’s there except for the
gorgeous irritation, like the chocolate gelato
with pepperoncini or sweet-and-sour cabbage 
with maraschino cherries and whipped cream,
but I’ve gone too far, which is a real failing, like the time
I was at my sister’s house and she was tipsy
and talking about her first two husbands and her son,
who was four, said, “Mom, do I have a brother?”
and in the pause, I said, “Yes, he’s twenty-two 
and he’s in the Peace Corps in Africa,”
and for a moment time stopped, and the look on his face
was part delirious happiness and part But I 
wanted to be the older brother, and then time started again,
and my sister said, “No, you don’t have a brother,”
and punched me on the arm so hard I had a bruise 
for two weeks, purple turning to yellow,
and I knew my nephew didn’t believe his mother,
and why would he, since his dream had come true
if only for a few seconds, but who can hope for more
in this world, because as soon as your heart’s
desire is granted, the shadows start gathering,
and I remember the art history professor
who lectured on these statues in a darkened room,
her soft voice from the back washing over me,
opening up a world I had only imagined, and now
she has said arrivederci to her beautiful mind 
in the undertow of time, and soon she will leave this world, 
as will we all, our memories like the smoke
above a campfire on the beach of our beginnings,
as we look out at the fathomless, storm-crossed sea.

—for Patricia Rose

Ode on Cream or How Memory Will Betray You
Like the Worst Boyfriend You Ever Had

At the Cream tribute concert Ginger Baker’s son Kofi
is batting out his dad’s greatest hits
with Jack Bruce’s son, Malcom, and Eric Clapton’s nephew,
Will Johns, and I wasn’t expecting much of this concert,
but friends wanted to go, and I loved Cream as a teenager,
in fact, I was sure that I had seen Cream in 1967
or ‘68 at the Waikiki Shell—Ginger Baker’s diabolical 
perfect time, Jack Bruce’s incandescent voice
channeling all those Mississippi bluesmen, and Eric Clapton,
quiet guitar god, but when I try to find any reference
to that concert, it doesn’t exist, and I can think of three
possibilities—I was so obsessed that I superimposed
the Bruce, Baker, Clapton triumvirate over a lesser band
like Blue Cheer or I was doing lots of drugs at the time
and made the whole thing up or they were really there
and there’s no record—and I think maybe if I take out
an ad in the Honolulu Advertiser, “If you saw Cream
at the Waikiki Shell in 1967 or ‘68, please contact me
at www.whiteroomwithblackcurtains.com,” because my mind
seems to be such a room, and I’m resisting 
this convolution of memory and reality, so I try to pin down
actual memories, and I did see Eric Clapton
at Park de la Villette in Paris in either 1998 or 2006, 
and my husband says he was there, too, 
Bad luck and trouble are my only friends, and that’s Albert
King, who I also think I saw at the old wrestling
arena in Honolulu with Paul Butterfield and John
Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, but the friend I 
thought I was with has no memory of that one either, 
If it wasn’t for bad memory, I’d have no memory at all,
and I realize that I know how to listen to this music,
my mind falling into its rhythms, and the current
configuration of Bruce, Clapton, and Baker is tearing up
the place, stepping up to the plate, and if not 
hitting a home run, but hitting a triple and bringing it all
back home, singing She’s gone but don’t worry,
I’m sitting on top of the world, and this is blues irony,
which I imbibed it into my marrow at sixteen
and the video light show is trying to give a sense of the old
pie pans of oil and water and food coloring
that looked like amoebas under a microscope in biology
class, and drum solos that lasted for twenty
minutes, and Kofi Baker has embarked on one that is
strutting the rhythms of the world, and the light
show is a combination of the Wicked Queen in Snow White,
and Georgia O’Keefe’s vulva orchids, and now
it’s lava flow and South American devils, or is it Hindu
gods and a speedway to oblivion because I’ve
been waiting so long, to be where I’m going, and the era
of the guitar gods has passed, Götterdämmerung,
and here we are in the twilight of their love, with no memory 
of how we ended up in Valhalla without them.