Little Barn on Crestview Drive, Pastel, by John Cummings
FOOL’S OASIS
It happened again this morning in the grocery store parking lot—
I stood watching the pigeons congregating, the torn up
scratch-offs gathering in flocks…Every time there’s a storm,
every March once the snow thaws,
I see the same thing. Utica is full of gamblers.
I walk my fence line with garbage bags, gathering the pied blossoms—
Take 5, Taxes Paid, Mega Multiplier, World Class Cash—
I grab them in hand fulls, uncovering the green tips
of crocuses, imagining a loaves and fishes miracle…two dollars
turned into a bank account with lots of zeroes following a one
like baby geese, single-file behind their mother.
And skeptic that I am, I cry out to the oldest god,
Mama Luck, a little help—PLEASE!—send me an easy grand,
or some spending money—just a hundred bucks to cover the water bill.
Give me my own Tahiti, and I will paint your picture every day.
Somehow, the pigeons seem content. They’ve given up waiting
for their fortunes to change, waiting for people to remember
they were once the sign of love and peace. Instead of horses,
Aphrodite’s chariot was pulled by “doves”—yes, these
promiscuous, docile gobblers of french fries. They coo and bob, peck
at the soggy lotto tickets, not bothering to check if someone misread the numbers.
When a wind picks up, or cars startle them—they all take flight together—
white wings flap in circles, gray slips of chance float away…
A sort of bedouin in search of water, wary of mirages, I stand
with my trunk full of bread and carrots, wondering
what they see from up there—if they are flying toward a fool’s oasis,
or if they know the secret, hidden caravansary of the lucky,
and I should follow them. But if they know, why, I ask myself,
do they always come back to this hard, ugly place,
unless they like scrounging. How could they mistake it for paradise?
______________
William Welch
Review by Dave Mehler
I have to say I love these poems on display this issue from William Welch, I’m so glad you found us somehow, William. Apparently the poverty of the Northeast is not so different than the poverty of the Pacific Northwest. The speaker brings me in mind of the customers wandering dazed through the aisles of Dollar Tree, while someone over the PA system is pleading for donations of a dollar on top of every purchase, for the poor right before Christmas. And I’m thinking what? They are asking for donations from customers who are poor and some of them homeless to support some class of others deemed even more poor, by whom? Pigeons and lotto tickets, and snow. I get Carruth and Carver, but also a maximalist voice that seems like neither. The subject matter and learning and the wit, and of course the down and out persona just trying to clean up and inquiring philosophically after the pigeons brings me in mind of those two, somehow, but I don’t mean at all to suggest Welch is at all derivative here–he’s just singing a familiar tune but singing it damn well but it’s all his. I never read a poem in which Carver or Carruth had lines like these:
—if they are flying toward a fool’s oasis,
or if they know the secret, hidden caravansary of the lucky,
and I should follow them. But if they know, why, I ask myself,
do they always come back to this hard, ugly place,
unless they like scrounging. How could they mistake it for paradise?
This poem was a joy for me to read! And I might as well say the other two were as well. Thanks, William.