Gary Margolis
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Gary Margolis is Executive Director of College Mental Health Services and Associate Professor of English and American Literatures (part-time) at Middlebury College. A former Robert Frost Fellow and staff member at the Bread Loaf, University of Vermont and Tennessee Writers’ Conferences, his book of poems “Fire in the Orchard”(Autumn House Press), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His new book, is "Below the Falls"(Addison Press). He has also completed a manuscript, "Seeing the Songs: Shamans and the Rain Forest, A Journey in Ecuador". He is the recipient of the first annual Sam Dietzel Award for mental health practice in Vermont, by the clinical psychology department of Saint Michaels College.
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State of My Nation Address
Neighbors and chickadees,
colleagues and compatriots,
citizens of the world, elves
and newts,
today I’m not standing before you.
No one has required me to give
my accounting of the past year.
I’m one of the unelected
sitting by a window filled
with the bounty
of grief.
I have no more to say
about the economy
than the sauce on my lips
from yesterday.
And nothing new to add
to our progress in the war,
though few of us can remember
when it began.
Allow me to start over,
to pledge my allegiance to the flag
not sewn yet,
none of us will feel
compelled to stand for.
Before I forget, I want to thank
my wife and my lover,
the bluebird, who is queen
of distractions.
Before I forget, I want to salute
veterans of foreign wars.
Nothing is foreign to me anymore
and I wish I could shake
each of your hands.
My assistant, the field, tells me
you’re no less than these blades
of grass, leaves who served
our country.
This is the place I am
expected to make promises.
I promise to weep with you.
I promise to stand in line.
To share my recipe
for a thin sauce of paper
and limes, appealing
to both sides of an aisle.
Did I forget to mention God?
I hope not. I hope some god
is being invented instead of another
government.
I’ve instructed my aide-de-camp
to lay in waiting for a little spirit,
esprite-de- corps.
To let me know I’ve remembered
to say everything I need to
about the hope of the wind,
a red flag inside the parking meter
signaling time has
expired.
Raising A Banner in the Garden
God needs to look up to
the rafters, see His Name
becoming a Number.
Remember Jim Luscotoff,
a box of a man, whose name,
not number, boxed out the sun,
elbowed the moon?
He hangs there because he won.And Togo Palazzi who shot
with both hands, memory raises
above the parquet floor?
God knows our names go up
in smoke. Red Auerbach can’t
come back, but the drift
of smoke can at the end of a game.
God needs a ring before
He retires, something gold
and green for the afterlife—
not a bird, yet piercing
our hearts like a ray,
a fierce gem, a garnet.
Reading in the Afterlife
Truthfully my biggest personal fear
is being stranded somewhere without
anything to read. My family teases me
about the box of books I lug around
when I drive to the corner store.
Who knows if today I’ll lag
behind the county’s sander
or be umpteen cars back in line
at the pharmacy drive-through?
Who knows if I’ll have to wait
for the dentist who hasn’t come
back from lunch yet? Or have my
flight delayed because someone
in Athens is having their shoes
checked for explosives? Where
would I look up the word for
fear of boredom, which, in another
language or parallel universe is
the same as dying, being left without
another world to go to? Some phobia,
I suppose, like macro phobia, my
fear of waiting for a long time.
That’s why I like turning a page
and seeing the pages go by like days
and knowing in that stack of books—
more like a ladder to the sky—there are
days and nights to come. Before I forget,
I too wonder why Athens would be
the marble city of terror.
Few have forgotten that’s where
the gods whispered and threw their
weight around, taking us as their own.
Everyone I know has their favorite
Greek myth, even if they don’t know
it’s Greek, even if they can’t remember
the entire genealogy say, of Aristaeus,
the whiny beekeeper, son of Cyrene.
Or why, really, did Hermes wear wings
on his ankles, when he could have ridden
Pegasus anytime he wished? I’d be foolish
or lying, if finally I didn’t say I am
afraid I won’t be able to read the books
next to my bed, the books in the basement
and the books in the attic, all the books
I haven’t taken out of the library, all
the books I haven’t bought yet
or borrowed from a friend.
Afraid I’ll be waiting, just sitting
there, without anything to read.
Rough Flight into Boston
The wind could have brought us down
into the whites of their eyes, the harbor’s
froth, onto the backs of swans and the swan
boats. Carried us against the tide of traffic
onto the golden bulb of the statehouse,
into that rich hill that blinks like a beacon.
The wind could have swerved us over
the river like paper hovering a sewer,
over the crews of students pulling their shells
through the blue tide of exams, the ratty Charles.
The wind could have thrown us like a line
drive against a green wall, bounced us on a court
in the Garden, in the North End, the Back Bay.
Could have piled us against the teeth
of Kennedy, the lamp of Revere, the jump
shot of Bird, and the hat trick of Orr. Shaken us
into the ink of Hancock, the speech of Paine,
the drawl of Dorchester. Taken us between
the breasts of Gardner, her courtyard flowers,
her Rape of Europa. Could have sunk
us in a barrel of dropped r’s and r’s added
to any idea. Why did Salem hate their
women? Would we take Harvard’s new
drug or the prayer of Mary Baker Eddy?
How could the wind know to push its own
button, dropping us to the lobby of Logan’s
runway, leaving our hearts in our throats up here?
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