Goat , and: Baltimore , and: Grief , and: Greater Winter , and: My Iberia

Abstract

Goat, and: Baltimore, and: Grief, and: Greater Winter, and: My Iberia Rebekah Remington (bio) Goat Rebekah Remington The weather was saying come out and so they did,the man, the woman, the boy, adjusting to the waning heatafter so much midday sun, after the inertia of indoors,the blare of screens, the sticky floor, the fragilearrangement of trains. The boy kept falling off his bicycle,getting back on, pedaling the short length of the field.It was a return to kindness, despite the gnats everywherelike colliding names coming out of the future.It was a reprieve after so much flickering noise.Beyond the baseball diamond, at the far edge of the complex,a goat walked to a fence, waiting to be fedmilk thistle or burdock or a graham crackerfrom the hands of the child, who imagined he alonehad been born for this moment, that without himthe goat might die of hunger or loneliness.The sky had taken on a shapeliness like a floodplainin an aftermath, an eerie pinkish erasure,as though the time remaining were centralto some dirigible idea of happiness. [End Page 134] Copyright © 2008 Curators of the University of Missouri Baltimore Rebekah Remington If the freezer were stuffed with lambIf the twilight were organized by firefliesIf the wind's dysfluencies could be discernedIf ever I said what I meantthen we might drive to Franceon a muddy road lined with asters;we might buy that shed we've always dreamed of. In the rectory where I grew upthere were all kinds of little people.They had their own way. They owned sheep,were occasionally cruel occasionallykind. At night they crossed the hinterlandssearching for estuaries, encampments,small fires. They warmed themselves,they fed. As for us, we slept badly,less than fifty feet from the dead.We were trespassers, Anglicans, almost atheists.When the heat was too muchone of us slammed doors, one of us went to the cemeteryand saddled a stone. Now my love and I reside in a small Cape Cod.The dead less visible.The window unit makes it hard to hear.I am shouting about the crickets in the kitchen;he is two-stepping to our favorite psycho killer tune.I wish God would show up;then again, no. We have enoughgoing on here, what with the porch falling inand next week's exam on the defibrillator. [End Page 135] Copyright © 2008 Curators of the University of Missouri Grief Rebekah Remington A prodigal afternoon, the minutes going onlike a drunken divinity student who decides to sober upat my table till he becomes once again articulateabout the gods. I order a double rum and speak to him about Mother in an empty bed,Father in a box in the Cathedral of the Incarnation. I confess: I don't know the joke of happiness.I drink and breathe.I can't see beyond the unwanted Christmas trees. Come with me to the sweat lodgesays a honeyed voice, but I'm wary of the subliminal hymn.The idea of going is a paradox: Father in a box so small I could carry it home in my two good arms,home that noisy placewhere no one does enough about the dust, the dishesand knives clatter and a bad news show plays in the background always. Mother leftwith all those clocks and their crazy windingschedules. Now my friend going on about economics, Africa and all the unbelieversin the Canterbury Choir. He clings to me on the parking lot beyond which the evening settles in,a few unknowns gather in the disfigured trees. [End Page 136] Copyright © 2008 Curators of the University of Missouri Greater Winter Rebekah Remington They say in a book love comes first,second comes the knife;third, common ground birds. We were eating bread in our carchewing on this. We haddiscussed much of love, the oldest oak on the continent.I knew my St. Augustine.You knew the older philosophies, dinosaur theory and the dynasties of stars.It was time to find jobs, time to go...