Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World

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Say there’s a man out the window or
a cat scratching the door
like a strange man
and no telephone,
no way to call out
or fish guts spilled straight
into the Aegean
farther up the beach
or that our skin can burn
can glare sunward so and scratch.
True, paper-eating bugs
have got in the paper paintings
mold in our pillows, rough sheeting
and that we’ve got to leave
on the ferry on Tuesday,
out with the tide,
but don’t say it say instead
love, I love you you sleepyhead get up
get up get up
the sun is.
TRANSCRIPT OF BIRDS, CONTINUED
[second bird:]---------
[to its mother]
[mother gives it some food]
---------
---------
[chews, no swallows, whole]
[1 and 2 sit] [patiently] [wait]
[mother hands it to the black bird
w/ the orange on its face]
[you’ve got to hand it to her]
THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE WE HAVE TO LEAVE
From high above, I take three photographs of the same view of the terraces leading to Chrysopigi: whitewashed church on the peninsula-turned-island, its once-neck cracked by God away from the mainland to save monks under attack. Also it is beautiful, this our everyday view from breakfast, and also it is completely ordinary.
I want to commit it to memory. I want to commit it to memory. The photographs slip in place of memory, metaphors for the actual landscape. Transubstantiation. Out of my hands. I sit and watch.

Plain
I AM ON A PLANE
Have I been
on a plane
the greater part
of the day?
I believe I have.
I fall asleep.
I wake up still
on a plane.
I see the sun out
the window I shut
the window shade I go
to sleep. I wake up.
Still on a plane.
I see the moon halved
in the sky in the late
afternoon the same day.
I spend time off the plane
buying food and killing time
till the next plane leaves
and leave it must
and I on it still
I go to sleep.
*
I am asleep on the plane
next to the coffee machines
and I wake up smelling
burnt coffee on hot plates.
I am still on the plane.
The lady dispensing
the coffee is
halfway down the plane
and I am at the end.
Sometimes they start
at the end
but this is not
one of those times.
I go to sleep.
*
I wake up maybe
five minutes later
maybe an hour
maybe we are almost there and
the lady with the coffee
is two rows off,
has she passed me by
once already, asleep,
and come for a second round or
have I been sleeping
for just five minutes.
I don’t know.
I open the shade halfway.
Tops of clouds.
*
I wake up and my throat is parched
it feels as though the adjustable air hole
has been blowing directly on
my throat
the lady offers me
pretzels peanuts or cookies
I choose peanuts
she gives me two packages
12 g each, calories from fat 60
well and good
but I am so thirsty.
*
I’m on a plane and
the woman next to me
has a project.
She is tearing the pages
of a magazine
into smaller pieces,
maybe to mark pages
in a book, maybe
for some other reason
but I am trying to sleep
and I am trying to sleep.
The lady puts the torn paper
in her purse
for later use.
*
I try objectifying
the flight attendants.
This is not as fun
as one might think.
And a guy gets up into
the middle of the aisle
and begins his mild
calisthenics
bend, stretch, arms up,
bend, toe touch,
arms up,
rolls his head.
*
The overhead bins
of some sizes of planes
are too small for roller
carry-ons so nothing fits
and this is one of those
sizes of planes,
I am row 37
and my bag is row 28,
had to move all
the plastic-wrapped
blankets to fit it,
over there, I keep thinking,
remember to remember
you are missing parts.
*
Am I getting anywhere?
I must be
if slowly, if bit by bit,
an act of faith
hurtling through the sky
500 miles an hour or more
I put myself in someone else’s
hands, nod off, even,
and when I wake
the solid surface of clouds below
looks like a landing pad
in this light.
FARM PLOT
Even looking up, it is flat.
Sky stretched tight just
above the trees, great white lid
flat screen projected with
the movie of a sky (no plot)
great white parallel lines, sky, snowy ground,
a whole house gone blank as if caught between mirrors, smaller and smaller.
Sky pieced with light clouds brown white
washed blue new floodwater
and I can tell I am in Ohio just by the sky and
the parallel horizons line up thusly, mathematical:
huge cloud line, pieced top, like reflected farm plots then
thin line of bright horizon and
then the ground.
INTERVIEW
You love your west. Your home.
I do.
Your rocks. Your landscape.
My mountains. My mountains.
So why do you want to work in Ohio?
I have a job in Ohio.
That simple?
Oh I would not say simple. Rock
is simple. Sand in the desert is. My job
in Ohio is not.
And how is Ohio different?
Ohio is not different.
When you say different do you mean
from itself or from other landscapes?
You said different.
I said different?
Look at the transcript.
So I did.
What I mean is that Ohio is the same as itself.
That seems clear.
In Ohio, I cannot tell field from field. I drive
past a field and cannot find
a mark to differentiate it
from other fields. I have no mountains
to orient my map,
I have no map in my head to begin with, only stops
on the route, as with a subway line.
You have no cardinal directions?
No scope. No freeway ramp
high enough to see it from.
High enough for landscape, you mean?
Not nearly landscape.
Could a ladder help?
Perhaps a ladder. Perhaps
I could use a very tall ladder. To take it all in.
LAY OF THE LAND
Listen: train, train.
It goes low, high
the high part lasts longer
low
low, high.
Cool window air
feet height
when I am on my bed.
On my radio
a dead guy sings.
Let’s say it doesn’t bother me.
Let’s say there’s no breeze
and I open the window.
Let’s say no breeze I look out the window.
What does one do the land is flat.
No where for a breeze to start.
I am tired.
It takes more here to walk a dog.
*
A grocery store.
A gas station.
And Upground Reservoir,
built on the old quarry
where they removed the rock,
and Riverbend Park,
the prettiest spot in town but so flat
I can’t tell which direction
the water is going.
Cooper Tires.
A cemetery, then the city edge,
line of trees
field field silo with an eagle
painted on its side
then a plain old silo then 12 more
exactly like it
another cemetery.
National Lime and Stone you can’t see
from the freeway
Benton Ridge Sewage Lagoon
you also can’t see
and the hole they dug
to