Letter to Gary from El Dorado

About the following ... when a poet uses the word suicide in a poem, don't despair ... until you are invited to their funeral there isn't a problem. I wrote it after reading Richard Hugo (the Montanan, died 1982), so you may note his influence. This was originally posted in my blog "L'aura del Campo"  in entry: "A plethora of Garys. The flags of the World Cup 8" .


Letter to Gary from El Dorado


Dear Gare, I befriended a spider. Long legs balled up, drowning in water. Scalding, you see. He, she or it is better now. Legs stretched out at the edge of the shower, clinging to the cliffside of tub. And Misty-the-missing, so cat-like is she, approves of me too.

Only the mourning doves move startled. But they'll moan at anything more substantial than shadows. I am thinking of suicide, how Anne Sexton was happy one day, writing a letter, dead the next. If I don't hear from you soon, I may follow and leave you this note. There is little to note.

Did you know the red in strawberry milk comes from beetles? The roaches are plotting revenge, the ants stirring rebellion, storing up for the siege. I see them trailing their path by the doorway. I sleep in the back ... out-of-sight.

It has been years since I've slept in a place so dark by night and darker by day. No light ever enters this cave. And it's quiet, the silence of graves. The cat, ants and doves make no sound that can reach me. Only the tapdance of breakfast from the kitchen above wakes me up. It could wake up the dead.

I am thankful for that. It's the alarm-of-the-dawning-of-day, a signal to start moving about. I'm about sipping my orange cappuccino, instant, made with hot water. I've finished reading Dick Hugo and his poems from Skye. What celtic clan were our forefathers, his, yours and mine? On what viking ships did their blood sail, respond to what cry?

I always ask why, but you never answer. Perhaps, because I ask it of sky. It's blue and warm and drying my laundry that I washed out by hand. They hang on the line: four shirts, four underwear, one pair of pants. The grass below will welcome their moisture. It is dry.

By August we'll be choking in dust. My dust, if I die. But, praying for death's not enough. So I lie on this couch, my dearest of friends, and write you a letter from Kansas, not Scotland, not Skye.


© Kåre Enga

catalogue number: [163.206]
skrift: 25 juni 2006 i 5th James (red)