The Pelican has no Aubade
au·bade (oh-bäd)
n.
1. A song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak.
2. A poem or song of or about lovers separating at dawn.
Saw K this morning walking Lola and Cleo and he was in a sunny mood and said that he is optimistic about the city and our chances of rebounding. I said good because everyone else seemed to be in a funk about it and the crime is picking up again. He said he thinks because he writes for the TP and works with a team of others who are actively trying to get the city back on its feet or feel as if they are contributing to it that his feelings might be colored by those efforts. At the same time, he said his house took on three and a half feet of water and the insurance company keeps jerking him around and switching claim reps on him and this has been going on for seven months. But he said, it doesn’t matter, it’s not like he could get anyone to work on the house at this time anyway because of how crazy things are here.
The usual sudden have to do’s on the LaLa sent me into a whirling dervish – and still some things just not worked out – sigh – and don’t know when they will be.
S called from Hawaii looking for sunshine – we had it here – he did not have it there.
E pounded her fist and said why aren’t you angry? She said I am angry. I muster anger in some places but not in others – I don’t know – I am angry – I feel like I am – but I don’t always relay my anger to those it is directed at – and sometimes I do – I don’t know, it doesn’t come naturally. And sometimes it appears like a volcano. I’m apathetic about anger – it’s sadness that stirs me more – I don’t know.
Chicken Vindaloo with sugar snap peas and a nice bottle of Shiraz Viognier – L came over for dinner – this is exactly what was in my fridge to make for dinner Sunday night when we had to evacuate – I think I am confused – I just don’t even know what I feel anymore or what I am going to feel = and so the pelican drops out of the sky and dives for a fish and then without the fish in its mouth it sits there bewildered – ai ai ai – shaking its beak and wondering what went wrong this time – it took the risk, there has always been reward, but this time there wasn’t – are you mad pelican? are you sad? or are you simply bewildered?
Voyage
I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on
in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book’s end more beautiful.
— And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, “I’m only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It’s turning cold.”
Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That’s the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage —
And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,
I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.
And the sides of the ship were green as money,
and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.
Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.
At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it —
The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.
Tony Hoagland
Hard Rain
Hollyridge Press