Dept. Of Speculation

44

I’m hungry. I want to eat something delicious, have a beer and a cigarette. I’ve come back to Earth full of desires. The air tastes good.

This is what the Japanese reporter said when he came back from the space station.

In the morning, the wife lets the dog out: Hey a squirrel! Hey a tree! Hey a piece of shit! Hey! Hey! Hey!

They bathe him together, toweling him off gently. Afterwards, the wife gives him peanut butter and watches him lick it from the spoon.

What Emily Dickinson said: Existence has overpowered Books. Today I slew a Mushroom.

The husband buys a grand piano. No one out in the country cares how long or loud he plays. He teaches the daughter a few finger exercises. But she would rather pack a bag of candy and climb a tree.

He composes something beautiful for the wife. Songs About Space, he calls it. Sometimes she plays it late at night when he is asleep. She thinks of that radio show, wonders if the girl still listens to it.

For a long time, the wife had an idea that the girl might write her a letter. But, no, no, of course, there is nothing.

The wife sits in the backyard with binoculars. She is trying to learn about the birds. She has seen robins and sparrows and wrens. A green-throated hummingbird. She wants to know the name of the black bird with the red wings. She looks it up. It is a red-winged blackbird.

Dear Girl,

She writes the philosopher a letter instead. He has gone to live in the Sonoran Desert. He met a poet there who tends sixty kinds of cacti and speaks three languages. Yes, the wife says. Stay. She tells him about the red-winged blackbird because it is important to know the names of things.

My brother used to ask the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but it is right.

The leaves are nearly gone now. The daughter is pressing them into a book. The husband is outside chopping wood.

(So ask the birds at least. Ask the fucking birds.)