Outside, the landlord undertakes the landscape
\nwhile he waits. He is ignoble
\nin his T-shirt, jiggles
\na little above the taut power
\nof his mower.<\/p>\n
But he gets things done.
\nWhen he puts his chain saw once
\ninto our shade tree, it twists and falls.
\nIts branches look up startled
\nfrom the ground.<\/p>\n
Inside, I curse him for coming.
\nIt is in the dining room.
\nBlank walls undo the voice of my anger;
\nyou look up from naming boxes
\nand shrug.<\/p>\n
Behind you a hook has left
\na hole open like a mouth.
\nI half see it, the way, taking out
\nboxes, I notice your writing thin as tendril
\nand misspelled.<\/p>\n
His family drives in.
\nThe car is in love with size,
\nwanders into the front lawn by our truck
\nand stops: its chrome grille tips and grins.
\nThere\u2019s the big wife<\/p>\n
who came at supper once when light was amber
\non our table and our books lay
\nbehind glass in another room and the cats
\nriffled their bright fur, telling us how
\nshe\u2019d fix the place.<\/p>\n
The children watched her flat voice hang
\nin the air. It was as if they were dreaming
\nshe was there, they were so awed.
\nClosing a door on upside-down dining chairs,
\nI, too, am dreaming.<\/p>\n
And the dream goes on. It will not stop; I can\u2019t awaken.
\nWe are still moving out of the old cape.
\nIn the front yard another tree
\nhas foundered. It leans on one side like
\nan exhausted fish.<\/p>\n
The family outside seems underwater,
\nmoving onto the floor of the new space.
\nSlowly, the boyfriend is bumping the strange, angry
\nsaw against a branch. Blue smoke blooms
\nand rises.<\/p>\n
The daughter is pleased\u2014her sane
\nskin wavers in the light. The wife
\nis too big. In a kinder dream
\nshe might lift slowly upward
\ncarrying her clear<\/p>\n
modern window planned for the upstairs
\nfar beyond the upstairs. But here
\nshe just remains too big
\nand does not budge from earth.
\nMeanwhile, the landlord<\/p>\n
judges in his baseball cap the calves
\nof the boy, how well they know
\na motor. He is at home
\nwith enterprise and things that go,
\nand when he shouts<\/p>\n
commands that drift sleepy as bubbles,
\ninaudible above the raging saw,
\nwe both can hear them say:
\n\u201cYou are awake. And what you\u2019ve dreamed
\nare your five gentle years.\u201d<\/p>\n
-Wesley McNair<\/em><\/p>\n\n Outside, the landlord undertakes the landscape while he waits. He is ignoble in his T-shirt, jiggles a little above the taut power of his mower. But he gets things done. When he puts his chain saw once into our shade tree, it twists and falls. Its branches look up startled from the ground. Inside, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3967,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3966\/revisions\/3967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}