*Wigging in, wigging out:
when I stop to think
the wires in my head
cross: kaboom.*
James Schuyler, *The Payne Whitney Poems*
Yet we were rarely as content as when, way up the canyon with a load of stones, well toward the fag end of some longish day, Dow in descent, with something like chagrin plain on the faces of prospective guests, I’d happen on my bird guide in the woods.
None of this made much sense, though, at the time,
during those days of solfèges, as we paid,
played, all the tunes in true coin of the realm,
not to be outdone by practitioners
of darker arts, with our claviers and drums.
Just showing up at dances made us loved.
Happiness was the virtue we’d perfect,
project, I should have said, what old McCool
dreamed being our emerging on the plain
at the sea’s edge, plain truth he would have said,
had utterance not failed him at the end
of serried days, each lovelier than when.
For E, C & p
V.2.2014