Love Paean

Ah. Everything has come to a stop. A propitious stop, soothing. The hurly-burly and sound of tribal claims have quit. The streets are barren of noise. The ebullient fleshy lights flicker no more. Iron steps leading into buildings do not ring with shoes. Windows fold under shades. Perhaps it is about to rain I don't know. Or snow; it never snows here. I wonder why that is? Years ago I woke up and the roof tops were white as an old head. People skied down the hills of San Francisco. Bizarre. It rarely occurred. Laughter was heard between the rolling traffic.

I'll muse awhile. I'm not feeling well. Or I'm feeling perfect but can't go any longer forward. The children built snowclowns and threw balls of ice and slipped to fall before their shoes gripped the snow.

The barren trees filled with heavy clumps of snow and quietly shook as cars passed by.

And everyone had a remarkable ability to speak to strangers and celebrate the fall of snow. The bridges lay frozen over the water. I don't pretend. I'd love it to snow. I'd love to see drifting snow before it hit the ground. Eyebrows would be softly dewed. Hands would retract into pockets. The breathing would insinuate itself like an old song.

Let's not pretend, we all have problems. One is stuffed in them and then the weather takes to howlin' to make the problems mere white noise, mere particles carried away by the next passing blast.

Specifics. The other day the woman I secretly loved moved away. I had never talked to her but through eye contact had burned a message into her which she couldn't helped but pick up.

She worked in the store I go to to buy groceries. It's not pathetic for a man to fall in love with someone as they are working. I don't know what it was that made me love her. Her beauty was awkward and pronounced by a little button nose. Her sadly full eyes always seemed cast down.

Perhaps it's further interesting that I never went to her register to check out. I didn't want to hear her voice. I imagined it was tuned like a harp and clean so when it ran across my face I smelled clean. But I would constantly stare at her at every opportunity. Down the aisle or in the check-out line I stared with more perseverance than anything else that had come my way.

The several times we made eye contact my blood tingled. She smiled once. A poignant smile, one that I was convinced was driven up from her secret heart. I knew immediately she knew my feelings. She was simply waiting for an opportunity to happen.

And I smiled back and from that moment I was in deep love for the first time in my life.

I admit I knew nothing about this woman but the fact I loved her.

I had even made stories about myself that would impress her. They were not lies but simple additions and subtractions to what was in bud, a fact.

For instance, the money I made. It was very little; enough to eat and be ashamed. But by adding a few figures it would be respectable. And I knew eventually I would reach the number I would quote to her. Why, I'd been promised a raise two days before.

It would work out. I would lie about my age. I don't know why, it's a feminine trait. Women don't tell their ages because they are rhythmical beings. They invented time I'm sure of it. This is why they do not fear death, really, when you get down to it; women have no fear of dying because they know the architecture of time.

But I felt an urge to cut a few years off so she wouldn't think I was a failure. And it was easy to shave five years off my age since my looks had not changed for ten.

The night had arrived when I was going to introduce myself and tell her my plans for us. I sped to the CO-OP, my heart beating faster. I sat in my car in the parking lot and turned off the engine. Half a dozen other cars were parked and I could see the lights inside the store dimming and inside, through the glass doors, I saw a man counting receipts at her register.

It didn't occur to me that it was her register. She could just as well worked another one that night. That's what I must have thought unconsciously.

One, two, three people came out of the store laughing. They divided and went to their automobiles. Inside, the store got darker. A fat man emerged soon and he turned the key on the magic, electric doors in front.

I panicked and got out of my car. I caught up with the fat man as he stooped to get into his car.

'Excuse me,' I said.

He stood up and faced me. His ruddy, fat face looked asleep. He sighed. He kept the door open.

'Yes? What can I do for you? Yes?'

'I was looking for one of your employees. I didn't see her come out of the store.'

He peered at me and cocked his head. 'What's her name?'

I tried to ignore the question. I knew that stores could not give out certain information to anyone but relations. I didn't want him to think I was a maniac. Many would think that.

'She had,' I stopped and pushed my nose in slightly. The fat man looked at me strangely. He shook his head.

'Does she have a name?'
'Donna,' I blurted out.

His head tottered on its neck like a child's toy.
'No Donna works here.'

'I think her name is Donna. I only met her once.'

'One of the girls quit the other day.'
'Quit?'

'She moved to Los Angeles. To become an actress or somethin' I don't know.'

'Did she have a button nose? And long, brown hair down her back?'

'Yeah, I think. Yeah- let me think. She had a nose I couldn't quite figure. Like it'd been bitten off.'

'Ah,' I groaned.

Suddenly the fat man bowed. He swung his body around to plant himself in the car.

'She done flew. She's gone that one. Next time you see her she'll be up on the silver screen. Makes you wander don't it?'

I released my frozen hands above my waist and they fell to my thighs.

The engine of the fat man's car turned over and he turned the wipers on to clean the rain that had collected during the day. I stood and watched him drive away. That night I murdered Donna under a willow tree. And now, everything has stopped.

Well, you can see the problem can't you? My secret lover is going to become a movie actress where she'll be accessible to everyone. And she'll change horribly. All her suffering nuance will become blasted away by expression after expression fit only for old clowns. Worst of all, they'll take her to a surgeon to pull her nose out a bit- put gauze inside the nostrils to support it- god only knows she'll never return.

The button nose remained shining in my mind.

And her eyes were always down as though she felt deep shame every moment of her life.

I was in a column of automobiles moving slowly; rain began to fall. The languorous work of the windshield wipers made pleasant my ears to hear.

I turned the radio off and listened to the gentle sweep of rain slashing off the glass and the fizz under a column of wheels barely moving.

Yes. I'd ask her out. Next week. An unobtrusive restaurant. We'd glow in lamp light and speak out tiny streams of vapor.

Her name, even, her name remained as anonymous to me as any other stranger but I was no stranger to her. How could I be a stranger to her if I loved her!

At home I dreamt her life for her. And I can assure you that it was twice or even ten times better than the life she was leading. I gave her the name of Donna. I had a Donna before and she did not deserve any name so I stole it from her and gave it to the one I loved.

Donna it was for weeks. And for weeks we lived under a drift of hills up the coast. Her work in the kitchen was precise and rapid. And there was always generous laughter because I would sneak up behind her and tickle her nose.

As a meal cooked we would run through the hills. Once we stumbled upon a herd of grazing cattle. Donna and I held hands and flashed the cattle with our laughter until our sides ached. The beasts moved slowly from the center where they grazed, revealing a lazing bull in their midst who stood on four legs, its tail erect.

Donna shrieked. The cattle moved further and further toward the bottom of the valley where a pond lay covered by willow trees.

All at once the way the cattle ambled in a line to the green pond made horrible sense. The closest reassurance was hidden over the hill.

Donna and I stepped backward, lightly, letting the bull know by our caution that we respected its territory and its role as protector of the herd. I wanted to shout down to it, 'we come in recognition of your right in the hierarchy of beasts!'

But I didn't want the bull to hear a strange noise and charge because I knew women couldn't run all that well and I wasn't in any shape to carry her.

We backtracked until I felt we had reached the top. The bull remained further down the hill.

I knew that her life and mine were so private, so distant in need that any pretense to bring them together would result in absurdity. And awkwardness.

Awkwardness was a greater fear than absurdity. Her life, gestures, desires, the rest of what constitute a life, were so refined that awkwardness became a plague to the sensibility of everyone. Let a man be absurd and he may become a hero but if he becomes awkward he is doomed to a hellish existence. His imagination has no more choice in the matter. It animates the consideration and stares of others until he believe a truth is being revealed to him. He must follow the animation like a man inside a dark theater following the figures of a cartoon with rapt attention.

But it's all over now. It happened quickly; as quick as an eruption out of dark time.

For weeks I had prepared myself for the inevitable confrontation. I would wait until she left work. In the parking lot I'd wait.

Oh Donna, of the golden hills where my dreams live!
Oh Donna, where I have buried you between the roots of an old willow tree.
Ah Donna, you were good those few moments we really knew each other. I thought I had died and been reborn in a dream separated by the sound of snow in foreign tongues.
Ah Donna, don't you understand that all I wanted was to lift love from beneath your conscience so that you could live a perfect life!
Donna, Donna, your beliefs were of no use to me
Donna, we would have lived in windmills in the vast plains of pleasure.
Donna, I am an ancient poet who evokes your name as if it were a potion

I stood on the hillside yapping these lines into the empty air. I hadn't written a line of poetry in my life. It was as though a tiny sun pushed its way into my throat. It shined into recesses I did not allow myself to see. I was impressed with myself, with this new found voice and became even more desperate to show Donna my astonishing talent. Don't actresses try to enact the poetry that moves in them? And if they do not find it they wither and suffer and fall to the wayside. She did not know, then, that I held the key to her future; the key to her success. Rather than ignorant, I considered her a project. She was empty and to be built through the words that rushed through me on the astonishing golden hills of my land.

Donna of the empty heart/who dreams of the fullest heart

Donna who peaks into the corners of Hollywood to find what she needs to slay in herself

Donna, full of grace and shyness in the hot California noon.

A new perseverance entered my life. I was to telepathically signal to Donna my inspired words that would find her, only her. When she discovered my inspired words between the choas of Hollywood, she would pause and let herself be filled with delight and confidence.

I only waited for my dear Donna to be revealed as a star!