It’s a Thursday in May after five
when I swing into the Piggly Wiggly with two bikes
on the back of my SUV, and the dog inside;
The woman slicing my deli ham
struggles with the wrapper on the summer sausage, limps like
her hip is bad, too; she paces, trapped behind the glass cage;
When I check out, another woman
bagging my groceries eyes me and when I say “Everything in paper except for
the cold stuff,” she rephrases:
“Cold stuff in plastic, everything else in paper,”
which is what I said, but in reverse, and she seems disapproving, so then I hedge –
“Well, whatever makes sense.”
And she says “All right, as much as anything
makes sense any more” which seems a bit dark but also somehow
appropriate, and then referring to my copy of Vanity Fair
tells the checkout girl that the big Royal Wedding
is this Saturday and that the bride is 36 and who even knows if she can HAVE
kids, she’s been married before you know;
The checkout girl who is maybe mid-thirties
yawns and asks me if I know that I selected some organic bananas, I say yes,
I want them tomorrow and they were the only ripe ones,
and then she also clucks disapprovingly, either sorry
that they did not have non-organic ripe bananas to offer me or maybe sorry
that I am the type of person who cannot wait for bananas to ripen;
Outside the old man with a service dog
who looks like a floor mop and would do a credible job at it
asks me where I’m from, and I say where,
and he says that traffic in Green Bay
is terrible, he knows because he goes to church down there every Sunday,
taking his life in his hands, practically,
I say “Ah, the roundabouts,” knowingly, but he says no,
the drivers down there are terrible tailgaters, all in a hurry, and for what?
And peering in as I put away the iced tea and bottles of water
asks me what kind of dog I have, growling in the back seat
at his mop, and I say, and add,”He’s not really friendly,” and then
he too is disappointed, and calls to the friendly dog Brice or Bryce
and they amble off into the spring green grass, where
Bryce or Brice dutifully poops; but after the man goes to find a baggie,
he can’t find where the tiny poop is and when I leave
he is still walking in a circle, searching for the pile. But what I
am thinking about is how I’ve disappointed them all, and the way the woman
put my turnovers at the bottom of the paper bag and said,
“as much as anything makes sense anymore,” maybe referring to
lava breaking through the crust of the earth or the president of the USA
paying hush money to a woman they call Stormy,
or more likely something to do with her children, who don’t call,
or Piggly Wiggly’s schedule for the weekend,
rather than heroin leaving a wide path of destruction across the American cornfields,
and meanwhile I, privileged and having all advantages,
unfairly, undeservedly, drive with a dog and bikes
and cheese and chips to a place where the sun makes a wide and slow arc over the river,
shooting sunlight like glass marbles down the its path
and the sky turns the clouds pink, lavender, yellow, by turn
and a silver fish flashes in the shallows and then darts like guilt into the deep
and I turn to ascend the stairs, going up, and up, and up.
Halfway North 