It is November. I have been putting this off much too long. I can see the rain explode off the floor of my porch, hear its cackle on my roof. Difficult to begin; much easier to listen to the rain, become lost in its greyness. I am alone in my study, a single light branching out over my desk, its pearl light making everything else grey-green, like a dark aquarium. Noisy with the binding of books. Silent with indecision.
When he showed up at the post office that day, when we saw him for the first time, we were, to say the least, pleasantly perturbed. I remember him clearly, not so much for his appearance, which was unusual in itself, but the combative kindness he carried with him, as if daring anyone not to accept his generosity and wholeheartedness. He was not tall -- perhaps five-seven or five-eight -- and had an inconsequential build. He dressed in castoffs: khaki pants liberally patched, work-worn boots, a flannel shirt not far from being a polishing cloth, a canvas bag attached to a long strap that crossed his chest like a bandoleer. But what was most arresting was his face. His forehead, like the rest of his features, was wrinkled, like a crumpled brown bag, but the strong healthy skin made his age difficult to tell. His mouth moved gently under a thatch of hair that fell into the disarray of a goatee, but his cheeks were clean-shaven and his sideburns short. He gathered his hair into a thick queue that rode patiently on his neck; the hair itself was newborn fine. But chiefly his eyes held the mixture of kindness and stubbornness we had sensed in his presence -- they were a damp black, like wet earth, shot with specks of a lighter color not quite gold that glistened in certain lights. He was unfailingly polite to the postmistress, filling out the forms for the mail box, handing her his five dollars for the rental fee, but it was clear she did not know what to do with this kindness offered from such a ragamuffin shape. When he had thanked her and left, everyone there watched him go. He did not so much leave an impression as a wake. We all bounced around, slightly jostled by the man's singularity.
This picture is important because so many others will paint their own distortions to satisfy their own fears about who he was. I am telling the truth as close as I can; yet even as I conjure up the images and anecdotes of his existence, they are all faded, like the light of a November afternoon. I am sewing with nearly invisible threads, my bloody fingertips leaving words behind.
Too much mea culpa. Get on with it.
At that time I taught (and still do teach) English at the local high school. When Greg Snider came to town, school had just been let out and I faced, for the first time in my life since puberty, a blessedly unemployed summer. I had promised myself that I would resuscitate my dormant mind and finally get to the book I had been chipping away at for years. Like most of the people in town, I thought Greg was just another of the hippies who hung around the Embassy, the cultural leftovers of a previous generation.
Indeed, he seemed to be one of them. He had rented a room over the Embassy (which, as I found later, had only a plank desk, an old chair, a lamp, and a mattress on the floor) and conversed with the hippies most of the time. No one knew what he did for a living, but he always paid his rent and never asked for credit. Evenings, he would sit on the bench in front of the Embassy and a small group of people would gather around him and he would read to them from a sheaf of papers in his hands. Over time the numbers of people would increase, but in the beginning he had only a few listeners. Tom, the police chief, would cruise by in his patrol car, but as far as I could see no one paid Tom any mind, just paid their attention like coins to the slight bearded figure reading in a single clear voice. He was reading them poetry, I found out, and I learned that the only thing he did during the day was write poetry. Sometimes someone would catch a glimpse of him walking through the forest near the fairgrounds, sometimes he'd be sitting in the middle of the football field or in the laundromat. Some thought he sold drugs for a living and told Tom so, but he just said in his usual gruff manner that the guy was clean. Some people thought Tom himself was frustrated hippie.
Perhaps the suspicions about him started there. I suspected him of nothing more than perhaps being a better writer than I was. My novel was limping along at that point, and I came to listen to him both for some inspiration and to see if his character, transmuted, would revive my work in progress. I suppose I used him like everyone else did, tried to get something out of the words he freely offered to everyone without giving anything back.
His readings were never announced nor were they every night consistently. But like a pheromone the signal went out and people drifted in, and soon Greg would arrive and place himself among them. His seat was always on the bench. Usually without much preliminary, though sometimes he would explain how he got a particular inspiration, in a voice that was at the same time reedy and resonant, he would read and offer his day's crop. Sometimes the poems were revisions and he would ask his audience if they liked the changes. If someone made a suggestion that he liked, he jotted it down in a notebook and cordially thanked the person for the thought. After twenty minutes or so, the reading was over.
I had been to poetry readings before, nice aseptic gatherings. Everyone was so intent at being at a poetry reading, especially if the poet was someone they had read in college, that they entirely missed the poet's words. But the audience was not the problem -- it was the way the whole thing was put together. There was the poet, no, the Poet, sitting before his listeners, his tie casually unknotted, reading at everyone. No one ever dared -- certainly I never dared -- to raise a hand and ask a question about the meaning of something. Disregard the fact that half the people there hungered to ask the same or a similar question -- it was just not done. So the poet would slip his private visions into our clothes, a reverse pickpocket, and off we were sent.
But Greg had sculpted something different. My first reading was on a beautiful July evening slipping gracefully into sunset. The poem he was going to read, he explained, had come to him while he scanned the bulletin board in the laundromat. A 3x5 card had said (here he rummaged for a piece of paper in his shirt pocket): "Wanted: someone to share nice fireplace, cat, popcorn, and second bedroom. Write to Box 302." "I began the poem," he said, shifting his weight, "with the advertisement itself and then put in some of the things those words said to me." He paused and looked at the people around him. "You can find poetry just about anywhere if you have your eyes on right." He cleared his throat delicately and began. (I have the paper in front of me now, the creases dirty.)
"Wanted: someone to share nice fireplace, cat, popcorn, and second bedroom."
"Wanted":
like a tree wants wind
to remind the branches of their roots:
we are here, we hold fast,
we will remain.
"someone to share"
sun, rain, seed --
share with me the strength of water,
the tendons of green,
hands leaf-catching the sun.
These are the continuities:
ravens chasing play in flight,
the second life chasing the first,
the fight to hold fast
while flying fast --
write to this tree that stands laughing,
cupping ravens at rest, roots knotted in soil,
write to this emptiness,
make it sound,
and curl upward into the sun.
At first nothing much happened. Then someone down front asked him to read it a second time. He looked up for assent. Several nodded yes. He read it again, slowly, emphasizing the relationships between the words. When he had finished, someone told him that he liked the opening image of wind reminding the trees of what it was. Another person asked why he used ravens. Greg said he enjoyed the way they played; they seemed a good image of the way we could allow a little play into our lives. A person behind me asked why he used emptiness if it was a poem about being alive. Greg smiled and said that she had to see "emptiness" with "sound," the idea of taking something that could be empty, our soul, something that too often is empty, and making it sound, making it "solid" ("like a sound dollar" he said) by making it make words or "sounds." The person who had asked him to read it a second time asked him to read it once more and by way of consent the crowd silenced itself.
When it was over the cars passing on Main Street, the general clutter of sound in the air, just did not exist. Everyone was immersed in separate reveries. My rational mind tried to make this just another reading by thinking of the poem's imagery (not very strong, it said), its structure (arbitrary), using all the tools I had been taught to lasso words and tame them. But it didn't work. He gathered his papers and left. One by one the people drifted past me until I had the bench all to myself. The streets were bathed in the sodium glow of the streetlights.
HAYING
It's haying time again and
oh hell have to oil that kicker
hope it makes it this year
Get the twine like a coil of sun
ready
The tractor snaps to the hay rake and kicker
moves out like a heavy lizard
growling up the road
The cut hay swells on the field
humps of some old dinosaur's back maybe --
but farmers don't think of that
just how damn hot it's gonna be and
how the hay seed'll itch
when it gets in your crotch
700 bales of hay, 700 square meals for winter --
the sun grinds your head
the heat sucks you dry
(this sucks you say and are right)
and hay dust wraps you in a cocoon --
your ear boils with the thunk! of the kicker,
your nose simmers with diesel oil and dry earth,
your arms burn bale-heavy,
your eyes just plain hurt --
all turned inward into fat off your bones
until you waddle the wagon home
stack the dry goods in the barn
and shuck the cocoon of dust off
standing cleaned and finished
with the colors of the setting sun
dancing over you
Afterwards the three farmers talked with him and shook his hand. It could have been like that, could have remained friendly and slightly amusing.
But a man who puts himself out puts himself out all the way. People came to him because they found in him something they could not find in themselves. When he made his audience laugh with a well-aimed joke, when he netted their hearts with a poem of bitter love or a yearning dream, he made them touch themselves. He gave them each miniature mirrors to reflect their own faces back into their own eyes. At times I had misgivings, accused myself of adolescent hero-worship, tried to get back to that even keel called adulthood -- but it was a summer of poetry.
A man who puts himself out puts himself out all the way. We all knew the summer was going to end -- school machinery was being oiled for another year, new armor for winter was being fashioned -- but we all decided to ignore that fact for a while. By the end of August, teenagers began to slip into the hearing crowd, cloyed by August heat and the routine freedom of summer. We had to move to the triangle of grass where the main highway and the old main street divided, ears open, lounging in words. It was all good fun, even if some parents took a dim view of the proceedings.
The last reading of the summer was on the day before school opened. None of the kids was there. It took no more than five minutes. I have the last poem here, the only one he ever signed:
There are hills
called years --
climb them we can
to find
new lakes and good fishing
on the downside.
There are caves
called words --
tunnel them we can
to find
new gold and good salt
on the underside.
There are oceans
called selves --
swim them we can
to find
new depths and good sailing
on the topside.
Climb, tunnel, swim --
whatever world you occupy
remember:
live inside each day,
sleep with your ears open,
disregard the official version,
go like light.
Thus ended the summer. When Greg suggested to me that he come to the school to teach some classes in poetry, I reacted enthusiastically. I told him I would arrange it with the principal and retimed my poetry unit to come earlier in the year. It was with great excitement that I met with my principal to discuss Greg's arrival.
I can remember the conversation to this day almost verbatim. Richard asked me to sit down and even before my rump hit the chair I was explaining what I wanted.
He raised his hand like a traffic cop. "Wait a minute. Who is this man?"
I explained that I really didn't know who he was but that he had been composing poetry all summer and reading it to people.
"Was he the fellow downtown, the one who hung out in front of the Embassy?"
I answered that he didn't exactly "hang out" but that that was where he gave his readings.
"I've heard about him. Some of our students were there, if I remember correctly." I said yes, there had been some of our kids there. "Do you know how I know that?" I answered no, but a chill crept into my throat. "Some of the parents called me, a few met me on the street, and pretty generally voiced a little annoyance at the man. I guess Tom has been getting flak down at the station, too."
I said nothing.
"You say the man is a good poet and I trust your judgment in that. But you know as well as I do," he said, shifting his weight forward to make his point better, "that when parents get mad at you, being in a beehive is comfortable. Some parents I talked to don't like him because he's got long hair, some because he's got a beard, some because he shaves only his cheeks, some because he disgraces the army by wearing fatigues, some because he's a poet and all poets are fags. You can't win with those people and you're better off not even trying." He sat back in his chair. "And you've not been immune, either. 'What would any respectable person' etcetera, etcetera. You know how it is." He shrugged his shoulders. "One of your saving graces is your willingness to think of the kids first. In this instance, think of the parents first." I didn't speak a word, didn't shift my eyes off his. He opened up his hands as if he were releasing a bird. "Have him in your class if you want, but don't make it for a long time, keep the material clean, and I'll fend for you." He smiled. "You try too hard at times."
I met with Greg that evening and we arranged what I could to do prepare the classes. I told him about the conversation with Richard and he laughed softly, almost to himself. We agreed that three days would be appropriate.
I went through the preliminary material and told them that Greg would be in to give some classes in writing poetry. They reacted routinely, disparaging the activity, even those who had been there in the summer, but I expected that and accepted it as their role to play. I invited other English teachers who had a free period then to sit in on the classes. Everything had been prepared.
The first day of classes sparkled; even my colleagues argued with him. When Greg returned the next day, so did they, and by the third day people were turning out poetry that they voluntarily, excitedly, read to the class. At the end of the third class, he asked everyone to collect all their poems into a booklet and give it a distinctive title. When he said his goodbyes to the students, thanked the other teachers for participating, thanked Richard for letting him come, he had, like Santa Claus, left behind a lot of gifts and a little mystery. It wasn't long before my colleagues, with Richard's permission, got Greg to teach in their classes, and soon Greg had touched, if not reached, every student in that school. Almost everybody carried around a sheaf of personal poetry.
It was not long after this that I got a call from Richard to come to his office on my planning period. When I walked in, three sets of parents, looking militantly serious, were seated in a glowering circle, with one empty chair off to the side for me. I landed squarely in it. Before Richard could even explain what it was I was there for, one of the parents, Bill Bigelow, held up a crumpled bunch of papers and asked me if I condoned the kind of crap his kid called poetry. I asked him for the papers so I could see what he was talking about, but instead he tore a page out of the papers and proceeded to read a poem about how everyone in society was a jerk and that what he, the writer, wanted was to be free "like a pod of whales in the palm of the sea." The rhetorical questions flew thick after that. Could I justify such attitudes? Was that the way I felt about the way things were run? What about my daughter's writing that she wanted to rub her body against the earth? When the meeting was over, Richard looked at me and said, "I've fought off lots more." I thanked him for running interference.
That night, after the first two or three phone calls, I found myself saying that Mr. Snider and I were only casual acquaintances, that I had not known him for a long time, that his poetry was not all that excellent, that he was not a very good teacher, that I apologized for having invited him to class. By the end of the evening I had thoroughly betrayed him, and to top it off, guiltlessly fell into a deep refreshing sleep.
The rumor assembly line began on him. He was a homosexual, a drug addict, an ex-con, a drug dealer -- the variations were all sickening. The last time I saw Greg his smile was unshaken but for the first time I'd known him he looked old. He knew nothing about my treachery, and to complete the act I said nothing about it to him. He deposited his poems with me, saying there were new poems elsewhere, shook my hand, and disappeared. I've never heard from him since.
While we all fear the big sleep, there are smaller sleeps that we take, small deaths that make us fit to suffer the abrasiveness of the world, but leave us strangely numb so that even as we do the best we can with what we are, we are slowly completed until, at the end of our lives, we are as complete as a brick wall. The clock is ticking. My legs hurt. My eyes burn. Once this light is off, once his poems go back into the drawer, I have as good as killed him. I hear the clock ticking. It is finished.