After We Saw What There Was to See - Lawrence Raab

 

After we saw what there was to see

we went off to buy souvenirs, and my father

waited by the car and smoked. He didn’t need

a lot of things to remind him where he’d been.

Why do you want so much stuff?

he might have asked us. “Oh, Ed,” I can hear

my mother saying, as if that took care of it.

 

After she died I don’t think he felt any reason

to go back through all those postcards, not to mention

the glossy booklets about the Singing Tower

and the Alligator Farm, the painted ashtrays

and Lucite paperweights, everything we carried home

and found a place for, then put away

in boxes, then shoved far back in our closets.

 

He’d always let my mother keep track of the past,

and when she was gone—why should that change?

Why did I want him to need what he’d never needed?

I can see him leaning against our yellow Chrysler

in some parking lot in Florida or Maine.

It’s a beautiful cloudless day. He glances at his watch,

Lights another cigarette, looks up at the sky.

The Sirens - Lawrence Raab

After a while we got tired of singing.

One morning out on the rocks

with not a ship in sight, we all felt it—

a certain weariness, a malaise,

if you will. We felt it together,

sympathy having become

one of the finer aspects

of our nature. We’ve drifted apart

since those days, yet we’re happy

being remembered as impossible

to resist. The legends used to claim

we knew the future as well—all things

which shall be hereafter upon the earth,

as our song put it. Everyone only assumed

we were beautiful. But we were, and are,

though not unlike so many other

women now, those who promise much less,

but let you live. It was a relief

to give up our powers willingly.

That didn’t happen often in our world,

where the gods went on amusing themselves

with their meddling, and the hero

plowed ahead, lashed to the mast,

dying to be tempted. Did we enjoy the clamor

of shipwreck? The cries of the disillusioned?

It was our job, our particular talent.

We weren’t supposed to want anything else.

The Witch's Story - Lawrence Raab

Everything you have heard about me

is true, or true enough.

You shouldn’t think

I’d change my story now.

A stubborn, willful little girl

comes sneaking

around my house, peering

in all the windows. She’s disobeyed

her parents, who knew

where the witch lived. “If you go,

you’re not our daughter any more.”

That’s what they told her. I have

my ways of knowing. All pale

and trembly then, she knocks at my door.

“Why are you so pale?”

I ask, although of course

I know that too.

She'd seen what she’d seen—

a green man on the stairs, and the other one,

the red one, and then the devil himself

with his head on fire, which was me,

the witch in her true ornament, as I

like to put it. Oh, she’d seen what she needed

to send her running home

but she walked right in, which is the part

I never understand completely. Maybe

she believed, just then,

that she was no one’s daughter any more,

and had to take her chances, poor thing,

inside with me. “So you’ve come

to brighten up my house,”

I said, and changed her into a log.

It was an easy trick, and gave me little pleasure.

But I’d been waiting all day.

I was cold, and even that

small fire was bright, and warm enough.

REPLICAS - Lawrence Raab

We were tooling along in Fred’s old jalopy,

thrown off our game

because the directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing.

I decided not to mention how appropriate

getting lost might be, maybe later

having to battle the elements to stay alive.

I’d been reading the old myths

and liked to imagine sailing through the clashing rocks

with only an oar for a weapon,

which wasn’t the most useful idea since we were heading

south of Tampa, trying to find our old friend

Adam, who might be waiting for a visit.

On the other hand, I thought, and then recalled

Adam having said far too often: On the other hand––

a knife is up close and personal.

People didn’t like to hear that kind of thing,

but we were sure he meant no harm,

even if in fact he did. We figured by now

he’d have forgotten the dangerous inclinations

of his youth, those days when he insisted

we’d all been misled by the voices

in our heads, then turned into replicas

of the people we thought we were. “Of course,”

Adam explained, “certain men choose

to be tempted by sirens. Others just let it happen.”

I told Fred that last part made sense, or sounded

like it should. “Damn,” Fred replied,

having taken another wrong turn.

“Not every kind of craziness makes sense.

Believe me, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

At first Adam was upset about being sent away,

but since then we’d heard

he’d grown accustomed to the quiet gardens

they let him putter about in. We imagined

him kneeling down in the soil

like his name-sake and weeding

something small and green,

wondering why he’d ever believed

what he had, or else why no one

had ever understood what he believed.

Or perhaps both thoughts vanished

while he concentrated on his task, half-listening

to the murmuring of the more distracted guests

as they explained to each other how easily

they had been deceived by their lives.