For Her by Ed Ochester
How sad to be a casual girl,
how sad to be bounced
in the rear of station wagons
along the shores of shrunken lakes.
How sad to listen to the men play
blackjack in the cabin and believe
Kafka’s Castle is a hamburger joint
and Truffaut a kind of mushroom.
How sad never to understand anything at all,
How sad to walk along the lake at night
and not understand why the stars have all
been eaten by the god whose name you
forgot at the moment but whom
Tibetans try to frighten with bells, cymbals,
and hideous dances on the edges of knives.
How sad to return to the cabin
and find the dead goose hung to bleed,
clamps in its nostrils, spinning
clockwise, counterclockwise—
that beautiful body hung like meat,
dribbling blood truly toward
the center of gravity.