The Math Campers Read online

  it to a broker in El Paso.

  I owned “East Coker” on cassette.

  We’re close to Middlebury now, I pause

  and ask my girlfriend how she likes

  the line, In my beginning is my end.

  She’s deep inside her mind; a memory

  of her father, this would have been

  the farm in Charlotte, highbush blueberry

  under a canopy of red pines.

  He’s picking blueberries for pies,

  she rolls in a bed of fragrant needles;

  she’s nine or ten. Later, by the lake,

  they eat leftovers with lemon juice.

  Houses rise and fall, I pause—

  isn’t that beautiful? Are extended, are removed…

  And now she’s in the backyard

  of the house on Pearl, Reggae Fest weekend:

  this was the summer the stars

  could physically be touched,

  palmed, released like butterflies

  in the electric heat of the city.

  How beautiful it was.

  How beautiful we were,

  growing up beside the lake,

  with the west right over there,

  back east where we still were,

  and in between, Juniper Island

  where we paddled our kayaks,

  got high, tied up, and slept.

  Past campfires: little ash-smudge

  flowers in the sand.

  Ours is still visible

  from the pier, the balcony.

  I swear I was in both places—

  on the balcony, on the beach—

  not as a metaphor, I swear,

  but split, or doubled—

  that was me and that was me,

  with Sean and Mike and Dave

  and the star cattle and Tom

  whose rat-a-tat-tat was shame,

  Tom’s brother too, his Adonis

  turbo-boost backhand

  that rent in twain the Mount Mansfield

  first doubles team, the champions.

  At least the island wasn’t

  someone’s failed attempt

  to halt time. It had that in common with

  with Pinhead and the Decentz

  and the other bands, whose homegrown new wave

  was Television plus The Clash

  minus the Wednesday Reggae Lunch on RUV.

  A dread DJ ripped hits on air.

  The balcony, the might-have-been,

  wasn’t mine. The party

  on the balcony, not mine,

  was mine; the when belongs to nobody.

  Josh True was there, his kids like

  little animals around his knee,

  my kids in the phase before the phase

  when they’re impressionable.

  I could touch you, though I

  never touched you, not

  until this chain-link conundrum

  made space-time belly flop.

  That’s me, much farther on in time;

  you lag behind, in bright-blue

  flashing neon I Love You

  cornflower shadow on snow.

  We made out lazily, for hours—

  cf. the underwater scenes in L’Atalante.

  It was late, our dreams crossed

  and we were nine together, walking home.

  It was getting late, and

  you could feel the strain

  of all the things that

  hadn’t happened yet not happening

  or getting ready to happen,

  or the period prior

  to their happening ending, the lead-up

  to the prize bull’s for-profit climax.

  Q: Down the stairs, then rapidly back up?

  A: I am the drop in the bucket, the dust on a scale.

  Q: You undid God with only a Plymouth Horizon?

  A: Plus a breakfast shift and Four Quartets.

  Q: Which mountains did you face, since you—

  A: Since I had two, two sets which I could choose?

  Q: Two sets of mountains, pick your side.

  A: I chose the Vermont side.

  I set my libido to “poetry.”

  Bernie conspired. So did Ben, Jerry,

  Larkin, Lowell, and Larry King Live.

  Q: Daniel, lève-toi et récite le Notre Père.

  A: Amnesiac Orions with their belts undone.

  Q: Daniel, répétez: Notre Père, qui es aux cieux—

  A: Matt crept on Sean in the skylit addition.

  Q: Notre Père, qui es aux cieux—Daniel, répétez—

  A: A dread DJ ripped hits on air.

  Q: —Et ne nous induis point en tentation—

  A: Bright-blue flashing neon in snow.

  In a booth in the back, a curtain drawn:

  full job, seventy-five. I Love You

  written in scar tissue across my throat.

  the rock face launched from its chasms

  bright-orange skiers

  auroras flashed then drifted

  the skiers were crepe paper

  the mountains had a mouth

  and it ate passing airplanes

  the conscience of the Adirondacks

  is the sandwort is the tundra yew

  a volley of clouds whipped past

  the trees and over the valley

  where Mount Mansfield was ready

  with a down-the-line return

  and the mountains played this way forever

  volleying to and fro

  fronts and storms as though nobody

  planned a homecoming

  and you could make them vanish

  and you could make them bashful

  and the skiers ran like tears

  and the clouds volleyed were volleyed

  back and forth all day

  all day over the valley

  Whiteface to Mount Philo

  North Hero to the Gothics

  Q: What was downstairs, Dan, in the walk-in?

  A: Del Monte; Canadian bacon; Andy Boy; and—

  Q: Dan, what was downstairs in the walk-in?

  A: Heinz, Vlasic, Hellmann’s; and—

  Q: Is that why Shooter became a Christian?

  A: Not then, not yet: a new baby, an upstairs nursery—

  Q: [Shield eyes] Oh God: a tragedy?

  A: To the contrary! The way a sunbather

  rolls over and over on terra firma

  the baby rolled over and over and down

  twenty feet into the limbo lap of an azalea.

  She steps from cloud to cloud

  in a snow-white cardigan;

  her head is the sun, her moonboots

  defy gravity; she is big with child,

  but a dragon waits nearby;

  a dragon with a landing strip

  that leads into his gut.

  Rewind, rewind, keep going, more, more:

  up step on top and view the valley

  Winooski slithering

  under the Richmond trestle,

  that’s where they built their camp—

  “I Shall Be Released”

  before I
knew the song

  plays over and over

  on an eight-track,

  soundtrack of here comes happy

  remembered long after

  they’d razed their camp

  and blitzed their family with a ray gun.

  He steps from cloud to cloud

  silently embodying the song:

  they say everything et cetera,

  every distance et cetera—

  Renzo was Feste, the Armageddon jester

  in our Catholic monotone Twelfth Night.

  Years later he reappeared on Jeopardy!,

  blown like a stray balloon by Hurricane Trebek.

  Bodhi came home with me, my first fall away.

  I’d told him we were plutocrats

  and lived the way a lifeguard lives,

  in the ether, cousins to the horizon.

  Since it was Friday, it was pollock.

  He grew up in a Gala orchard near Eureka.

  Vermont was more upholstered than I’d said.

  I thought, Please God, a shout-out from Renzo…

  When the pollock appeared he shoveled it down.

  He was/is Kyoto to my Winooski,

  hippie-angel-greaser to my malleable morals.

  The still point of the changing channels.

  Mariachi noodling was coming from the den

  and then it was faux-polka, big-ass

  fondant dominatrices with pastel accordions,

  Guy & Ralna, Ave Maria, and auf wiedersehen.

  I shivered in my bedroom, praying that art

  would someday send a ladder from the sky

  I could scale and become the love child

  of Sylvia Plath, Ozzy, and Alex DeLarge.

  I had “Crazy Train” on my Texas Instruments,

  and “Daddy,” which I recited in the mirror.

  Those rape scenes I fast-forwarded, I’m proud to say,

  but I slow-mo’d that William Tell ménage à trois.

  It worked! Art works if you are otherwise fucked, and try!

  Now look at me, almost Ozzy, mansplaining

  to my eleven-year-old son the photo

  of a Louis Quatorze gilt dildo he found in our cloud.

  What happened to Hibbing, Minnesota,

  they asked Dylan.

  And Dylan replied: Just time.

  Time is what happened to Hibbing.

  Imagine outlasting time,

  appearing on the other side

  of it, relieved, like

  Wow What Was That All About?

  Imagine outlasting time,

  coming in as from a blizzard,

  boots off, coat off, mittens

  frozen into an outstretched hand?

  They didn’t make coats back then

  like we have now, said Dylan;

  there was no crime, and no philosophy—

  people were just too cold back then.

  Imagine outlasting time

  to find all of your childhood

  pets curled up together in a ball, the cat,

  the fish, the hermit crabs, happy, cozy.

  A dream, I had the most horrible dream,

  spake the shepherd fair;

  to which his lass replied, no matter now,

  we’re here now. Quiet, love.

  here I go again into the bone jumpsuit

  detail by detail mortality cosplay

  répétez, s’il vous plaît, said my memory to me

  I did and still it said, Daniel, répétez—

  wring out the dawn, there’s a drop of light

  with my name on it, I am thirsty for it

  répétez, Daniel; Daniel, répétez—

  répétez s’il vous plaît, Daniel—

  Daniel, répétez—

  III

  The Math Campers’ Masque

  It’s Friday! Linus and Lucy

  are going apeshit on the Internet!

  Fucking Woodstock looks as though

  he’s going to explode with joy!

  Charlie Brown, cautiously carefree

  karate kicks the air,

  while Snoopy, serenity itself

  though denied dog pleasures

  like licking filthy laundry

  looking for a chicken-stock-soaked

  apron, Snoopy is happy!

  They gather, one and all

  “around the bonfire, the association

  of man and woman, in daunsinge,

  signifying matrimonie—a dignified

  and commodious sacrament.”

  A BOWER in a hot summer forest. The smell of pines mixes with lake water. Across the lake, a LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE.

  MATH CAMPERS drift across the lake in yellow inner tubes, linking arms as a group, floating together on the water, before dissolving into individual yellow points on the fringes of the lake.

  A PEACH TREE blooms, weeks early.

  In a building across the lake, JANET TWIST, a dean, and KYLE CONSTANTINOPLE, a philosopher, bring their long affair to an end. Gestures between them suggest passion long mellowed into affection.

  A MAN and a WOMAN, long married, recline on the forest floor, discussing the nature of passing time.

  MAN.

  We made this grove when we closed our eyes.

  If we open them, snows freeze

  And zombies swearing patriotic oaths will rise.

  WOMAN.

  We made this bower out of our desire.

  I held your head under the water.

  Remember your pleasure when I forced you under?

  And then I shaved your head when you’d been bad.

  And then I cut you with my blade

  And promises were made

  And promises were made on 75th Street

  In the unseasonable summer heat

  And it was then that that was that.

  MAN.

  I had a dream last night, nested inside another dream. To get out of the first dream I had to pass into a new dream. From the new dream, I looked back on the first dream and called that dream reality.

  In the first dream, L, age fourteen, took the train into Boston for the day, to shop for vintage comic books in the stores near Kenmore Square.

  When he returned that afternoon on the 5:40 train, he was a man. He had grown up. He looked at me with a sarcastic expression: hadn’t I realized that was why he’d gone into Boston?

  “That was the point,” he said: “That was the point of going, Dad.”

  In the second dream, I wake up from the first. It’s the same day; L is arriving on the 5:40 train, which we hear pulling into the station from our bedroom. L calls out to us as he enters the house. His voice is deeper. He is twenty-six, I somehow know; and yet I can tell from his expression, his absence of pity, his totally casual air upon entering our house, that we’ve aged along with him. We’re twelve years older in that single day. We’re fifty-nine; the mirror confirms it.

  In the middle of the second dream, I recall the first. I dream that the first dream was reality. I am relieved. That is not my face in the mirror. My face is still young-enough-looking, my muscles are still toned, my hair, though getting sparse on top, is still full and unruly.

  L, a thriving and healthy young person, aged twenty-six, goes up to his room, gets into his little boy’s bed, and falls asleep.

  (IN UNISON).

  We’ve measured out the summer

&
nbsp; With the math we’ve learned so far.

  If we want a longer summer,

  We have to practice harder.

  Love is a figure

  Divided by another figure.

  The lovers looking everywhere

  For answers are the answers.