By Julia Van Develder
Dec01
Two waspy Watch Hill women
encumbered with enough stuff
to see them through the season
mount the weathered steps to their cabana
without a backward glance.
They think I am one of them
and ask me over-the-shoulder
to get the gate.
I comply and then duck under,
desperate to pee,
and squat between two rolls of dune fence
exposing my indecency.
Into the spaces between their chatter
of Who’s Who in Westerly
the pee rushes and roars
leaving me half-amused
by my own audacity,
half-expecting the hew and cry
of indignant respectability
to hound me from hiding.
Empty at last
I drip dry
zip my fly
and sally forth
onto that mile-long stretch
of sundrenched sand
looking like I own the place
but willing to share, noblesse oblige,
with three fish-belly bathers
two bronze fishermen
and one imperious gull.
By Julia Van Develder
Dec01
Five days a week for five years
minus vacations
equals one thousand seven hundred
and twenty-five times
you’ve driven past
at least a hundred houses
on your way to work.
Raised ranches
in suburban semicircles,
handy man specials
with rusted chevys up on blocks in the yard,
yuppified farmhouses
with complicated swingsets.
All these years, you’ve rarely
seen a soul.
But on this particular morning,
you leave home early
for no particular reason
and find yourself
stuck behind a schoolbus
that stops at the white house
with the blue shutters
you never noticed until now.
You sigh inaudibly,
thinking why me,
the one day I was actually
going to be on time.
And then you watch
as five grown men
walk single file down the gravel drive.
One carries his lunch box tight against his chest
like a prize.
Another has his hair gelled up
and a puffy white coat.
The last one
smiling smiling
stops and stoops and ties his shoe
and you realize
in that split second
that you never knew.
You never knew.
By Julia Van Develder
Nov30
Two magnificent ordinary
sea gulls
side by side on the shore
naught but froth between them
look out on the white sea
with unblinking eyes.
My love, he says.
What? she says. What is it?
You loved me once, he says.
True, she says, I did.
And now? he asks.
She turns away.
Look, she says.
Look at the unfeathered:
See how they walk beside the sea
hand in hand
murmuring unintelligibly
content to find a bit of
blue beach glass
or a bunch of bladder wrack
or a smooth sea stone
as though for them
this midmorning stretch of sand is all there is.
And your point? he asks dryly.
Why must there always
be a point? she asks.
The point is, he squawks,
their ease is predicated on the primitive!
What do they know of diving
headlong into the sea?
Of winter storms and summer squalls?
What do they know of
the scarcity of sticks?
Of nest-building codes?
Their food is in the basket!
Their nest neatly unfolds!
Their courage dissipates
at the threat of thunder!
And your point? she asks dryly.
You idealize, he says, you romanticize.
What you seek is illusion.
That may be, she sighs,
and spreads her wings.
And he, foolish clever bird,
puffs out his chest and
watches her wheel away.
By Julia Van Develder
Nov02
Love is not like
your misplaced car keys
or your reading glasses
or your blood donor card
or the extended warrantee
on your new tv
or any of those things
you will find
if you look
hard enough
long enough.
No amount of looking
will find love.
All you can do
is become someone who
is willing to risk a wild ride
on the Merry Mixer
without holding on
for dear life,
someone who is willing
to be dizzy and dazed
surprised and amazed
by the inexorable
and heartbreaking
beauty
of everything,
every
single
thing.
By Julia Van Develder
Oct17
I see a cow on the news
and decide that now’s the time
to give up eating meat.
The anchor’s point
is lack of proper oversight
in meat packing plants
but the picture on the screen
is just this one cow
dazed and disbelieving
eyes rolled back
stumbling up the ramp
to the slaughtering chute
prodded by a man with his face
fuzzed out.
It looks to me
like the cow is wondering
how it came to this
how in a million years
she ended up here
in this cement stall
waiting for the ax to fall
instead of on a lovely farm
somewhere near Burlington, Vermont.
I know, I know---
cows don’t use words like lovely.
I plead guilty
to anthropomorphizing.
But pain is pain
and the cow was in it.
That much is clear.
I won’t lie to you---
I love cow meat---I do.
I already miss it
just like I still miss cigarettes.
I wish they could make
safe cigarettes.
I wish they could make
blue cheese bacon burgers
at the Racoon Saloon
without killing cows.
I wish a lot of things.
I wish fall and spring
were longer and winter shorter.
I wish I’d had the guts
to emigrate to New Zealand
when I had the chance.
I wish wishes were horses
so beggars could ride.
But what’s the point?
I could wish until the cows come home
and if they ever do, I could not eat them.
I could do that.