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Come, Endure

by Dennis Finnell

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To tell you the truth, we've all had
Twenty-three homes, as we've migrated
From one bed that orphans us
To the next cushioned chair that adopts
Our shape. We trail the harvest
Of desire or necessity, all because
Someone's eyes or our stomachs make us take another step,
Or a voice saying, ``I can't live without you.''

Soon we're up the ladder picking fruit
In another Eden.

We all come from St. Louis.

There the filthy Father of Waters
We call the Mississippi elbows its way through us,
Through the circular city, our alma mater.
It makes a gigantic phi on the Midwest, neither alpha
Nor omega. It looks
A lot like what it is, an egg being fertilized.

Closer, just below cloud cover,
As the migrating red-shouldered hawk might see it,
Or the window passenger
Stiffening to final approach looking out,
Our houses materialize, strung like atoms along the avenues,

And closer yet to touch-down and a sigh
Each one is individualized
With a brick barbecue or an awning
With the initial ``F,'' for example, or ``Y.''

These initials proclaim our affiliations
To the sky, the popular equivalent
Of talking to the alphabet
Other.
We keep coming down
Until we perch for the night in the scrolled crown of an elm,
Or finally touch the long ``I''
Of the landing strip. We get our motel.

You two sceptical girls getting all this?

We kill time until after the late war news.
We get a cab or wing it
To the window of the room in our house
Where our mother and father are about to do it . . . .

Soon they're joined mouths,
``O'' fused to ``O''--don't we

At their window know their pleasure,
How touching is always

Untouched, as though
Yesterday's caress does not matter--

Until in their coming all lovers
Come, endure.

Now turn from the window. Say to ourselves
``Go, now. Don't look back. Go.''

Go back to our motel or our tree, back
To the lure of painted bodies questioning us.

In time she did spread
Her legs in a ``Y.'' From it

We entered, screaming
With the new year on New Year's Day,
Some April Fool's joke.

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