FAT TUESDAY
(For Andre Codrescu)
You said
when you talk about
New Orleans at Mardi Gras
You always
feel like you’re
selling the whole thing
Short because
you’re forgetting the best parts
but you could also say that about
Life –
everywhere you look it’s
Fat Tuesday
And even that
would be selling the whole thing
short.
Ray Sharp
I-17, South of Flagstaff
10 p.m., starry sky, autumn chill,
winds buffet the van like waves on a lifeboat.
Returning from the film about Neruda,
warm inside our craft, filled with poetry
and the sad rhythm of miles. You beside me:
talk of love, of a certain face, of the subtle
slurred sound of Beatrice, of your sister’s first kiss
and when I floated on my back in the pitiless sea.
We know we are editing our words, our thoughts,
our dreams, our lives, and we acknowledge this
and more. And then there’s this: How do we
polish the sacred surfaces, as Neruda writes,
to reveal the dove who is born of light?
How do we, with our hands, make the world every day?
Mile by mile, with a firm grip on the wheel?
Exit 298, adrift in the balmy space of words,
I watch you slip away, your red hair floating on starlight,
into the cool, deep ocean of night.
Ray Sharp
1994
