Verdad Magazine Volume 7
Fall 2009, Volume 7
Poetry by Christopher Buckley
Long Afternoon
It’s just the dermatologist this time, so I’m not waiting.
as usual, to live or die—though it seems I’ve been
in the blind from the get-go,
never knowing which group I’m in, placebo or not,
the sunlight drilling in all these years, salt spray
biting at my cheek, the infinitesimal
dot that may enter and end me. Based on previous visits,
I’m still going to be here a while, so I might
as well open my notebook,
un-cap my new Parker fountain pen picked up in the Thrift,
and see if there are any good lines left in there,
if, after a half hour spent staring
at the esophagus, there can be anything inspirational to say
for myself as I no longer have, as I once felt I did,
all the time in the world—
those science reports left until the night before. The Dr.’s taking
his time, though if I think about it, he’s just like me,
racing from one thing to the next,
and working for the HMO, he’s rewarded for churning them
out as fast as he can . . . still, he’s not driving a Lexus
or living in style on the Riviera.
Nevertheless, the time, my time, the past, seems to have flown
away to somewhere on the outskirts of Calcutta, or
some other invisible venue none of us
have much of an idea about, or are in any hurry to get to while
we sit in a waiting room killing—as advertised—time.
I should content myself to still be
breathing, more than half a century after running around all day
in tennis shorts, in surf trunks the live-long day, the sun
evaporating above the unwavering
horizon line, imperceptibly placing its mark on my skin for later,
while I hardly took a minute to wonder what could
possibly be on the other side of the air.
Metaphysical Sketch
Moon
with a washed out edge
climbing
the plain air
of afternoon—
starry leaves of the liquidambars,
ascending
past the apex
of our terra cotta roof
inclined against the blue . . .
a moon
white as the first pear blossom
unfolding at the end
of March.
Low in the sky, I can make out the lost
continents there,
great ships under full sail . . . .
A gust
moves the dark
tips of the stone pines,
the crosshatching of light sinking
into the swells
of the un-mowed lawn—
the moon diminishing
in the glazed, indeterminate distance
like a white balloon,
its string slowly unwinding
from an unseen hand
toward
some vanishing point . . . .
Then, it holds there, going grey,
thumbprint marking
the shirt sleeve
of evening
so we do not
take anything even remotely
connected to our lives
as given . . .
BIO: Christopher Buckley teaches creative writing at U.C. Riverside. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry for 2007-2008. His fifteenth book, Modern History:Prose Poems 1987-2007, was published in 2008. Recently he won the 2009 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. Read the Verdad interview and excerpt from his memoir, Sleepwalk.