Keith Waldrop
As in Ambush

“... the infallible rule of the irregular”
—Isak Dinesen, Last Tales

Here is a house
for dream, corridors

of unsupported
conversation, unreturned
salutation, un-
thinking.

Dream—or maybe
drawing, memorial
disguises.

Say nothing, my Soul, and maybe
nothing

will come to mind.

•

Clothes make ... Well, no, they
don’t really. They dis-
guise.

Or, say ... they can be
slung, images

spun off, messengers—as God dispatches
His ideas (His
angels).

Strange thought, like prayer.

•

Come along with me, my
Soul, though we have
outdistanced perfect

pitch. Pain
we have always
to count on. Note
the skin’s “deep

meditative possibilities.”

•

Or roused from nightmare to
waking panic, from
night’s owl

to a hawk in the sun:

over our whole
field, imagine “jumping-and-
startle” behavior.

Imagine if we can
“the idiocy of the will.” And then

think, my Soul (cursing), what
small changes it will
take for the city—any
city—to be rendered
uninhabitable.

•

Or ... back to clothing ... to veil
the lurking rumpus. Take
it off

to bare a
skinful mask, or

consult (O swift
dromedary) whatever words
come meddling.

•

A spurt or surge of
fear—listen, my
Soul, hear the quickening

beat, dances in endless
chain from
liver to heart to brain,

involuntary. Airy
burst of spirit. Remember:
extremities die first, decay

begins in the feet,
flies then, volatile, upward (such
distant scapes),

much like love. Like
love, illegible.

•

To remember something (like
thought during
prayer) is
to lose the thing. Last seen in

passing. Follow
me as I
follow you, my Soul, be-
twixt, between.