Gerald Fleming: Two Somethings

This

He could have run marathons, triathlons, could have blundered through densest jungles barefoot, quick-macheted, and not been prepared for this. He could have caressed the skin of a hundred women or men, every texture, every shade, but now this. Did we ever expect this? He could have begun writing: one and one and two and two and three—begun at age four, and now at age eighty well into the millions, not counted on this. How about this? He could have built an engine, race car, flipped it, burst into flame with it, rolled, been saved, scarred, but never come to this. This is what happens. He could have made all the stupid mistakes: left the good wife, gone despondent in a strange land, squandered his time, and not have predicted this. Is this what you want? He could have gone to work each day on the train, read Auden’s “Unknown Citizen,” known it was written for him, thought he’d escape at the end, but surely must have known, mustn’t he, that the end would be this? This’ll take care of it, then.

Not a matter of experience.

Nor expedience. No alarm precisely set, obeyed, could schedule this. No files numeric or alphabetic could order this, no train on time, no lunch date not late, no factory whistle dismissing women, men. This is extraordinary. This is unexpected. This cannot be happening.

Nor a matter of convenience, energy or lethargy, intention, invention. No name stamped in black, biceps tattooed blue, a daughter gone Mormon, a son lost to the struggle.

Nor sincerity. Nor steady eye nor security, no immovable rock, complex lock.

Did they warn us of this?

They warned us of this.

Does this come as a shock?

This does not come as a shock, and none of us was prepared for this.

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Sleepless Night,

glutted with darkness, whose molecules are lies, whose winds on the ridge say cesium, strontium, who sells itself to the ignorant who become darkness, who sell it again, salesforce, whose snow falls on the glass drum of the skylight like sharp stones, Night in its goat-hair shirt, Night whose daughters curse you, you of the mudslide whose roar stays in their heads, you of the tubercular cough—a father’s voice rasped with sputum, you of the charred meat, you want more, don’t you: more bodies of young boys, Oil them good, send them into slaughter, Night to whom we say No & know it is Yes, Night to whom our sons pray Yes and know it is No, you who are no answer to the sea, whose depths confound you, you who make terror a tone poem. 

You think the stars recommend you? They hardly know you, blind Night, and our own blind, holy among us, claim you deserve neither obsidian nor hematite, you who despise fire, who suffer for lack of proportion—will you look to us to save you, Night? Even the screech owls are mute, the tips of their feathers singed with acid rain. You in your thick boots, you to whom we will not open our throats, the words in them viscous, conspiring against you. 

We hold tight. Accretion is with us, Night, momentum, and we turn from you in our beds, turn away again, again.

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Copyright 2025 Gerald Fleming

Gerald Fleming’s most recent book is The Bastard and the Bishop (prose poems, Hanging Loose Press, 2021). Other titles include One, The Choreographer, Night of Pure Breathing, and Swimmer Climbing onto Shore. New work is forthcoming in On the Seawall, Best American Poetry, and others. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area most of the year.