Jack Ridl

There’s a Word for That

She finishes the crossword in the Times
in twenty, sometimes fifteen minutes.
I don’t even try. But her modesty makes
me think I could, too. I could not. And
she walks Manhattan streets with
Maria Calas, Claude DeBussy,
Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Mark
Rothko. Back here she turns
Midwest, but then you see her
earrings, perfect broach, her
hem the year’s important length.
She brings wine. It’s in a box.
She makes you feel that you belong
in her world staring at her books.
And she’s a nurse. She’s Ivy League,
but she’s a nurse. A nurse. She wants
to know if you are taking good care
of yourself and how the family’s doing,
and if there’s anything she can do.
“Oh, (Fill in the blank.)” “Oh, yes. I know.
everything’s so hard. I don’t know how
we all can make it through a day.” She
offers med terms the same way guys
at any bar toss off the jargon of a sport.
But her words waken the life of life
and of course death, near death. And
if asked, she’ll reveal her newest
poems, ones you see at once
are worthy of the finest publication,
and you say it. She denies it,
says, “Oh no. Not these. I took them
to the Napa Conference, learned
how to start each line, and these
don’t measure up.” Your own
poems turn to doggerel; they damn
every wasted piece of paper. But her
humble effervescence undermines
what we all know is fact: she’s excellent.
But of course it’s never good enough, not
the salad tossed for dinner, the something
au gratin, not the layer marble cake
she baked this morning for dessert, the

“This old thing?!” she’s wearing.
And always the vocabulary.
It would send Roget back out to play,
turn her fellow poets into
up-all-night McGuffey Reader readers.
We know for sure she’s been here twice
before. We’re grateful for each unexpected
thing she brings for each of us. And yet
we’re furious that she knows a fourteen
letter word that fits in fifty-four across.

Time of Life

I’m sitting here on the front porch.
A ’57 Chevy just drove by.
Jim Wilson, who just moved in across

the street, is flattening the hedges
that edge the cracked sidewalk.
I watch a cocky skateboarder

flip, the smug rider falling shoulder
first into the hedge, the board veering
into the street. The kid hears me yell,

“You okay?” The pride-singed moan
shivers back, “Yeah,” in the wake
of his cool dash to grab the board,

wheels still spinning, board upside down
against the opposite curb. “Board okay?”
“Nope. Broken.” I could list a garage sale

of broken things: arms, marriages, lives,
toaster ovens, systems, covenants,
childhoods, my chair a couple years ago.

Fixed it. Now here is here. Everywhere
else is there. Jim, even Jim, and his hedge
are there. That Webb telescope is there and

if you’re there, it takes you out there. You
know the old line about “You can’t get there
from here.” Of course you could. But now I can’t.

On the Dock

At long last it’s 65 degrees, and I
step out from the wait for a break
from this passive aggressive climate.

My wife has left me sitting
on the porch overlooking the pond
we’ve watched let go its ice

into the mystery of change. We
had seen a fish, its slow weave
leaving a miniature wake. She

says, “I’m going to the dock,” and
takes the tub of fish food she hopes
will bring the turtles and bluegill

to the surface for the first time since
the chill of late October when they
felt what we call “below fifty.”

It’s late April. This morning
a turtle rose from the muck,
paddled, head in air, letting

us set aside the numbing
paradox of words and read
the unknown language of

the other. She walks to the end
of the dock. I know her skin listens
to the trees, water, sunlight, clouds,

and birds flying silent, branch to feeder.
I watch her toss the food. I watch the water
shimmer. “They came to what I tossed,”

she hollers, then sits back down. The air
will wrap itself around us. The fish,
the turtles, trees, and muck will know.