WATERING THE ROOTS OF A MIRAGE THIS MORNING

WATERING THE ROOTS OF A MIRAGE THIS MORNING

Watering the roots of a mirage this morning,

rain and sleet, big gobs of snowflake

thawing like emotionally sloppy galaxies on your scalp

as if you were just anointed for something

and it came as a shock.

November windows foggy

with mocha-grey cataracts

of self-effacing grime

slowly closing the eyelids

of the wounded winter mindstream

with the scar tissue

of old comets of dirt and ice

that had their fifteen minutes of sun

and now resort to pedalling the prophetic advice

they’ve derived like spiritual hash oil

from the shake of their personal histories.

The gram masters of Gore Street

are trying to unionize

into grandstanding delusions of OPEC

to standardize the price of Christmas,

and the housewives

are buying baby clothes at Giant Tiger

for their pregnant teen-age daughters.

Carpenters, plumbers, electricians,

masons, vets, farmers,

middle-aged real estate agents

with puffy alcoholic eyes

trying to be practical

and wryly jocular

about what they remember

of an acquaintance who died last night

between bites of toast, sips of coffee,

sections of the newspaper

that float from table to table

like gossip, Caspar’s ghost,

and affectionate anecdotes

about notable eccentricities of the deceased.

Disenchanted adolescents pooling change,

hockey moms in morally amended hairdos,

clinking spoons on the edge of their cups

as if they were calling a wedding to attention

and institutionally white restaurant platters

being laid down with Zen authority

like flying saucers

with a take it or leave it attitude

toward the Flat Earth Society.

Breakfast is always more

a riot of morning energy

than the sloth of dinner is in a small town.

People are more in synch

with the exuberant feeding hours

of the birds shortly after dawn

when they’re less late for anything

than they are in a city

where birds don’t set the agenda

and too many people died last night to care.

I can see what’s extraordinarily ordinary

about people in this small town in the morning,

and blessings on the head of everyone of them,

worthy or not,

but don’t really feel I belong here

anymore than I have anywhere else for that matter

having been accepted more by acclamation

because no one else

was as surrealistically qualified as me

to fulfill the drastic absurdity of the position

of being spaced out enough as a poet

that Perth has taken up residence in me.

I can bitch about the tractor trailers

crushing Toyotas like lady bugs

in the narrow streets of the town

and the millennial old need

for a bypass on Highway 7

but how can I add laconic comments of my own

like soiled blueprints I throw down on the table

about the progress of what I’m doing,

what I’m laying the forms for,

what bullshit I’ve got to put up with

at three in the morning

when the only callouses I’ve got to show

for all my work

are on the fingertips of the words

that keep tearing me down

like ten acres of old growth forest

to shape guitars out of my heartwood

that resonate like seasoned nightbirds

that are virtuosos of every branch

on the tree of life

every stave and leaf of a note

that stands on the threshold of its coffin

and sings like a home-made lifeboat?

PATRICK WHITE