News From the Outside World—January 1986

I take a lunch to the park to eat
by the reflecting pool, leftovers still
from Monday, but without the people.
Some ducks come up and attack me
for the food. I move away a bit,
and they come up again, and I move again.
When they come at me for the third time,
I laugh and give them the food,
thinking how peculiar I must seem,
I’m not really hungry anyway.
Then as I pick up the wrappings,
they want more, and I’m sad
all over again: in a few days
even the leftovers will be gone,
either eaten or turned sour.
I move this time to the higher ground
where I lie down under a tree,
a live oak with branches still full of leaves.
The tree is so solid against the sky
I become ten again, thinking
I’m seeing the earth rotate
when really it’s just clouds passing
over branches. I think that way
for a while longer, until the cold
finally sets in and I begin to cry.
I get up and walk back to the car.
On my way, this dog, a retriever,
runs up and jumps on me,
and when I bend down to pet it,
it licks me in the face,
puppy breath steaming from its mouth,
a gift, I think, from God,
and I cry some more.
But then its master whistles,
and it’s gone.
A leaf falls from the sycamore
just in front of me, as I’m still
looking at the dog, so very happy.
I am thankful too for this bit
of fall in the coldest of all months.
But how peculiar my perspective is
these days. By the time I get home
through the traffic, it’s dark.
The universe hits me as I walk
up to my door. We are wrong to think
it’s the background for everything.
Once inside, I sit down in my chair,
with the lights out, alone.
Here it is six days after you died,
and still I want to tell you these things.