All
Clues. No Solutions
This morning I listen to Marc
Cohn crooning "The Rainy Season,"
step out into a cloudy morning that looks more like Seattle
than Phoenix. Drive to work hearing a song
that goes, "If you're feelin' lucky then you ain't just passin'
through."
I sit in this gray office beneath cold looking sky, cold looking lights
and the work is cold as well, there is no life in it,
never was. And, again, I'm wondering why I'm here.
I consider Potter's comment, "All clues. No solutions.
That's the way things are." as I look at the clues
strung through my days, the nights spent looking
into what is nothing more that a silent movie
where the piano player fidgets with my hands, tapping,
Tapping out silent alarms that somehow never leave
my fingertips. The heat moves into the arms, the shoulders,
there are slouching considerations of comfort and denial
but finally, there is no conclusion, there really are no solutions.
There are all these clues, spreading like fire on dry paper
and I am left, standing, staring at smoke, heat, flame and cinder,
looking at ash about my feet as I smell of soot and struck matches.
I think of the saying that goes,
"Life is like a piano.
What you get out of it
depends on how you play it."
I remember all those lessons that might have been
except the piano teacher had to take her anger home
after her husband stalled his car at the railroad crossing,
after he didn't walk anymore.
And she knew it was stupid,
but what was she supposed to feel about someone
who played that badly. Why'd she have to listen
to the only tune he could play now?
And I remember how those tall,
white monsoon clouds would build
each afternoon, would move over,
move up, climb and climb
until finally the rain came to the
desert, piddling at first,
then crashing down in waves that
abruptly end
and clear, leaving mud, and washes
gurgling and wondrous scents.
I remember hearing that she'd
left town,
how she had finally left
in the middle of the rainy season.
RD Savage
06/17/94
© RD Savage, 1994