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Thunder Sandwich #23 |
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David Chorlton |
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A Letter to Pessoa I wrote thirty-odd poems straight off, in a kind of ecstasy whose nature I cannot define. It was the triumphal day of my life, and I shall never be able to have another like it. I started with a title 'The Keeper of Sheep'. And what followed was the apparition of somebody in me, to whom I at once gave the name of Alberto Caeiro. Forgive me the absurdity of the phrase: My master had appeared in me. This was the immediate sensation I felt. Fernando Pessoa Dear Fernando, I think I saw you walking today. You moved with purpose, arms swinging, your eyes turned inward behind the lenses of your spectacles. I would have stopped to greet you, but unsure of who you were today, I simply waved as if I knew you, as if I too had several minds. Your hat sailed merrily through sunlight, and you cast a shadow for each person inside you. I followed you into a bar and wanted to buy you a drink, perhaps ask about the trunk you keep next to your bed with your dreams filed away, or question you about the names you sign to them; one for the shepherd, one for the modernist, one for the metaphysician, and one for the keeper of the dark. You seemed strangely at ease in our city, which constantly rebuilds itself. Like you, I thought, with your multiple selves always waiting calmly in line for their turn in the world. I should have stopped. What could I have said to engage you? What I wanted to know was which face you see when you shave, whose eyes you close when you sleep, and how you decide who to be when you dress. I had nothing to tell you except that somebody not me is writing in my name and telling me I could have had another life without stepping out of this body. Excuse my distance as I sign off; an admirer. Counting Birds in Wickenburg We're out at dawn to drive between the golden edges of the clouds and along I-17 north, then turn west to begin our mission. Dressed to blend with foliage, we have come to place a finger on the world's pulse and start by counting mourning doves: forty on a power line, two in a bush, twenty on a path leading through creosote. The windows of houses in town are yawning as we infiltrate the streets. Twenty Gambel's Quail scurry by. Out into the desert, past the luxury home with a private airstrip, we plant our suspect selves behind a mesquite tree and survey the wealth around us before white-crowned sparrows move among the shadows. The Sunday rodeo starts early. A sound system amplifies Jimbob's time of five seconds. I make a furtive run to identify the only cardinal around. Better luck next year, we say, and turn to seven goldfinches in a tree. Back near the road we explore the trailer parks where the wildlife consists of cutout reindeer and a plastic mule in a collar of light bulbs. A Say's phoebe flies overhead. Our species count climbs. Canyon towhee. Two western scrub jays. We enter wash after wash from phainopepla twenty-nine to phainopepla thirty making notes as we prepare for another tour of the rodeo grounds where Jimbob's last ride ends in dust as the commentary rings in failing sunlight and we tally numbers before the drive back to our city waiting with its house roofs draped in electric frost. |