Woke up dizzy.
Went sweatily around my flat beneath the drying attic, and water didn’t seem to help.
Tucked the papers in my bag,
seated myself somewhere near the Round Tower and its observatory,
seated myself with my minor infections invisible to the naked eye, suddenly caught in the sunshine, and I thought, So the time has come to learn to surrender.
Walked in the afternoon’s warmest hour down the main pedestrian drag and into a bookstore, to caress one maybe two books on the spine, because that’s why they stand there, they’re just like the rest of us, they want to be caressed and loved despite it all,
I thought, and saw there was a figure from TV, balancing with an ice cream cone outside the window on a miniature bike.
Embarked for home, scalding hot, like a little steel espresso pot,
lay down, thought, There’s nothing wrong with me, but if I lie still then the echo chamber might stop tormenting me,
but it didn’t.
Dozed, took a stroll as slowly as I could, elastic as a dromedary, languid and lazy amid nature’s example for emulation: Come on, just overdo it,
and everything so lovely that it trembles, and I stand, undeterrably dizzy in the midst of it all
and listen, now the blackbird’s singing
and soon the chestnut will blossom.
~ ~ ~
Opened my hand and grabbed hold: I’m not letting go.
Set the fan four inches from the table.
Went for a walk in Western Cemetery,
sat in the shade of a dawn redwood and gazed at the monument of some random industry baron, pyramidal and ivied and all, and I thought,
He’s just like an Indian, that’s what he is, an Indian who enters his teepee after the lost battle to find the Indian in himself. He sharpens his spear, confronts his demons, sings about the night, sticks cords through his chest muscles and hoists himself through pain toward the light. He does it to find the Indian in himself again, and when he’s discovered him, he steps out of the teepee. And his woman is a squaw who’s seen the Indian in him the whole time and, no matter what he does, is able to see the Indian in him, but she also knows that the man she loves is precisely the sort of Indian who, after the lost battle, enters his teepee to find the Indian in himself again, so she doesn’t go anywhere. Where should she go?
Sat out in the sun,
lay down to read but looked chiefly at the sky, full of hoverflies and planes, and I’m not going anywhere. Where should I go?
Scribbled down an inscription: IN GRATITUDE.
Scribbled down an inscription: ALWAYS MISSED
and thought, No doubt it’s just a transition phase,
and then I walked home,
clipped my nails,
and drank my coffee scalding from the pot while I looked at my hand holding the nail clippers, the pen, and the memory of things I have seen and held true,
and it held on, my hand, it’s not letting go.
How could it?
~ ~ ~
Woke and could tell that it’d be a good day.
Biked to Dragør, which was the spit and image of the village I lived in on the island of Fanø.
Walked the bike straight out to the Sound and looked out toward Sweden, where clouds were gathering, but it didn’t matter, because above me the sky is always blue.
Read, in the scent of saltwater, wet dogs, and children, until the mist reached the Øresund Bridge,
bought a shawl in a dime store
and ate an ice cream cone on the lawn in front of one of the cannons that in 1808 had sent seventy balls into the hull of the Africa, pride of the British fleet, and ’twas on a day like this, with jam in the corners of the mouth and the will to believe that the tide of battle had turned.
Walked along the water,
sat down by the harbor,
gazed at the swans while a father and his little boy raced along the breakwater, on a day with no trapdoors but with swans and the breeze on my face, and there is peace, there is only kindness and good intentions and abundance in the hollyhocks, the half-timbering and the swans, the swans and then all the saltwater below.
Biked homeward and was already freezing in my summer frock by the white church in Dragør.
Biked through the airport tunnel just as a Boeing or something took off, and the pressure and its flight out into the world shook the ground, the bike, and me as I sang, because no one would be able to hear me anyway in all the happiness
of just such a blind and sated Pentecost Copenhagen.
~ ~ ~
It was the sky from the morning,
the sky and my hand resting on the duvet,
and it was the rain and the writing on the wall, on the shopping list, in the letters
and the walk in the cemetery under white hawthorn, red hawthorn, and me and a squirrel in the willow allée.
Reserved a table at the hotel for me and Dad and Mom, and I’m looking forward to them seeing where I live, and I’ll show Dad the planetarium and Christiansborg Palace, and I’ll show Mom that that house by the Søndermarken streetcar stop where she once lodged for a week as a twenty-year-old, not knowing that one day her children would exist and that her daughter would stand brimming and point, that that house is still standing.
Thought about my dentist while I boiled eggs,
wrote a crucial note,
had an attack of vulnerability from the silence that fights back
and then took a walk on Queen Dagmar’s Boulevard among the girls hopscotching and the boys with their scooters and then me and my insecurity, but the one who writes must dare to stand with her fledglings stuck to her fingers and surrender them in showers of spittle and roses
and keep going, because it’s important
and keep going, because it’s alive
and keep going, because that’s what she believes
and that’s the way the future is,
keep going, because she loves it (I love it)
and keep going when she can’t do anything else (I dare to)
and keep going, because that’s the whole idea.
That’s the whole idea.
~ ~ ~
Got Mom and Dad from platform 2, Copenhagen Central Station, and they waved the whole way through the passenger tribe.
Let Dad tell everyone on the metro where he was coming from.
Let Mom hold my hand all the way home from Langgade Station.
Expected nothing less and said nothing about my expectations.
Took Valby from the green side, took Frederiksberg with flowers, wood pigeons, ducks, and Dad in the zoo,
and it was the same animals they had in Central Park, I remember, penguins, polar bears, and wolves, and the stench of the primates’ urine also the same, and I sat tailor-fashion like a local bohemian on a knoll with my takeaway and phoned Dad, who was walking about among his trees on the other side of the planet. I can see the Empire State Building from where I’m sitting, I lied. And I can see the transformer tower, he lied, and then we spoke for the rest about how long it had taken my postcard to get there.
Had my picture taken with Dad and the cow with black patches.
Let Mom hold my hand, and I didn’t say a thing, and didn’t cry either.
Walked home through Søndermarken,
made them coffee while they rested their legs,
made notes about that when neither of them was watching, and then
let Dad tell everyone in the restaurant that it was my birthday.
Went home by Magnoliavej after dinner and the birthday business,
the lilacs, the California poppies, and Mom’s fingers in my palm, quietly morsing the message, It’ll all turn out okay, it’ll all turn out okay,
it’ll be okay,
my mother’s fingers morsed, and then I morsed back
Yes it will, yes it will.