On Wednesday I Cleaned Out My Wallet

by David Ray

Hard to find collection of poems from award winning poet.

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

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[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Along the roadside
I write on a curled leaf.
I write on a cardboard cleverly
folded for toting the beer.
I write on a sack flung
in the sun. I write
on a bluejay’s feather, the white
edge that he’s left me,
and I write on the air
because it too is blank
and invites words of despair.”
—
“Today I have one duty only,
to ride a plane to Kansas City,
first a plane to Washington
over the Wilderness where blood
was gladly shed, then on
to St. Louis where the pioneers
set out again – and home where my wife
and I renew our love
with each return. The dog
is old now, but his love’s
unwavering. If I had it
to do again I’d treat him
better, starting with the day
we wrapped a clock up in a towel
to comfort him with mimic of
his mother’s heart. And treat her
much better too, and myself sometimes.
And the children who are gone now
to the land of lovers and fast cars.
But I do not have it
to do over, no more than Oedipus
or any man who plows a salt field.”
—
“There’s a hidden rural town, or slice
of one, rusty barrels for burning trash,
tires laid out for planters, firewood
stacked, petunias round a stump. A blue
shack endures behind a sleepy mongrel
chained. Daffodils nod yellow heads
and above me through the fog, airliners
roar, barely miss the blinking tower,
stave of five power lines on which
one lonely note, a hunched-up crow,
is etched on grey manuscript. A rabbit
rests beneath a pine, and I too long
to stay, hunker down, safe as he is.
But war’s still on, our country torn
by strife, and I must fly back through
those toxic clouds of woe, fire not yet
controlled, must ride through air to spy
upon the land, see if green’s returned,
if silvered rivers keep their gentle course.”
—
“Flaubert, holding a breast of marble,
‘apple-round, solid, abundant, detached
from the other … the fecund maternity
and the sweetness of the love which it invokes
makes you almost swoon …
How one would have lain up it, weeping!
How one would have fallen on one’s knees
before it, hands joined in worship.’
‘You will never have a rival, never fear!...
I will send you a list of things to bring me.’”
—
“Fame for you was bright as the white walls
of Mykonos – and beyond, an archipelago
of such islands beckoned, where the suns struck
and the young gathered round, as if
a god had docked, stepped off his boat,
come to town, like Dante or Vergil.
But idly you spoke to me, speech wandering
as it does in the confessional. You spoke
of love lost, bruised till it made song
bloom and glow in the bitter air (and down
through the patronizing years.) She clung
to you still, like a leech or a scar,
and you were kind to her, with money
and a rusted-out car. It was Aristotle
who told us friends must first be equals,
that the great speaking when the lowly
are listening is not friendship. But if
I had known that chasm would be a wide wound
never to heal, no bridge build ever,
how could my face have achieved its farewell,
there above my beggary, that lake, orchard
full of a thousand rotten truths.”
—
Gold flesh against swart green of pines,
this tableau of the bathers gleams
and enthralls me. Between us lies water,
my ripping ladder of vision, flung tope.
On that distant dock, bodies lounge,
display themselves as they did for Cézanne,
pace as in the original stadium
naked for Plato. For a while they shimmer,
shiver, assume pose of pyramids, bear
light only for lovers. The women slip
into the water, brief kiss as face
meets image. But a harshness darkens
this pond near a battlefield, provokes
early concert of cicadas. The swimmers
climb out chilled, wrapped in weeds,
men fretful for fighting, women
bronzed slick, tensed to bear torches
Raillery explodes like Sieg Heils
They're seeking a tyrant to lead them.
flame out through them, shape them
to malice, set them marching toward hell.
Blood moon rises through mist
on this field scarred with trenches.
and the night is lost for all use
of love. On my knees I escape
through the woods, echoing now.
shushed mantra numb on my lips, and ahead,
apples on trees are beginning to burn.
We have been so innocent we have never.
never seen this, kiss of the fire
on the tree, as if sprung from earth.
—
“The assignation made, or so he conceived,
he lay in the shadowed hammock, connubial
in size and possibility. And swaying, he felt
himself snared, given over body and soul.
to this latest lady who soon, he was sure.
would bend to him, slip into his net. Yet
he lay hungry, expiring, his gills weary,
an ignored catch between twin creaking masts.
And the moon mocked him gleefully,
and a chorus for those who are beautiful
and beyond touch teased with distant voices,
and he worked to think of her, how
she was such a beauty, white as the inside
of shell, coral as coral, and he thought
of her light step rolling the world of
her body. For all this he hungered
and for her adulterous kiss. But only a spider
came near, as if he lay in an inn
of a distant land, or a cave, he who had
no address, no home, who had burned
all bridges, who had set out in fog.
slander heavy on all harbors. In that net
he lay sorrowing, and he thought
of her playful, tigerish teeth. He admired
her lies, how her eyes had promised.
And he lay back to let the moon
come into his arms now, and he knew
the mantras of crickets concerned him.
He had paid the price, and his heart
knocked with delight, in its cage of bone.”
—
“By chance I glimpsed them, mid-morning lovers
upstairs, over their fence of wire net, laundry
afloat in the breeze, shirt like a great plum,
brassiere bereft and hangdog on the line –
I sighted along an inclined plane their dark
shadow centered, devotions most tender,
all of an instant vivid, like birds beyond
their orchard of apples. Her shuddering hip
and fall of soft breast broke me,
not touching my face, nothing but an old dog
my companion as we both kept walking
as if by command, our pace unbroken
though the front yard pulsed and glowed green
and the sky flashed blue with their abandon,
which bid me stay, be born of their love
above that backyard of laundry, backlit shirt
of my father, frayed curtain whipped inward.”
—
“Someone else can tell you
about your life. You hadn’t noticed.

But the painter talks
about your wife,
her model,

her marvelous figure,
which you had noticed, and
her delicate ankles,

which you hadn’t,
and the old friend recalls
your son waddling

behind a duck
in the park, calls you
insensitive for forgetting,

and there was Arnie,
who said he’d been
so moved, hearing

your account, shortly
after the fact
of your first love

(both of you virgins
near the sea) that he
had wept, just hearing

such innocence. But
by that time you had grown
too crass

to care about your own
life. It was
his tears

that made you feel
anything at all. That night
you wept anew,

full of beer and your stale
corruption, and dreamed
of your son

again, waddling
in diapers, chasing
with his stick

that white duck, as in
a wall-painting of Pompeii.
You had a life

another tells you
and you at last,
in tears, agree.”