James Tate /   Lost Geese


When I saw the Girl Scouts walking down my driveway, I went and hid in the
closet until long after their knocking subsided. I have an irrational fear of
Girl Scouts, I don’t know what that’s called. Otherwise, I think I’m pretty
normal. Sabrina called to tell me her goldfish had died. She was actually
sobbing. “How long had you had him?” I asked. “Just a week, but, still, I
loved him. Because of my mother’s wretched cat, I was never allowed to have
a goldfish throughout my entire childhood. And now this,” she said. “Can’t
you just go out and get another?” I said. She hung up on me. I guess it was a
pretty insensitive thing to say, but I was trying to be nice. I knew Sabrina’s
mother, and, it’s true, she loved Miffy more than she loved Sabrina or
anyone. That was one fat, ugly cat. I was flipping through a catalogue of
amazing gadgets, none of which I need, all of which I want, when the phone
rang again. This time it was my old friend Joachim. He used to break wild
horses, then he hoboed for a while. I always had a special place in my heart
for Joachim, until he found his way into high finance, and now he bores me
to death, but I can’t tell him. He wanted to come over and watch a basketball
game with me, but I told him I was working late on a report. Joachim knows
that I am unemployed at the moment, but he was polite enough to not say
anything. If I know Sabrina at all, she will have an elaborate funeral for her
goldfish, which probably doesn’t have a name, complete with church music
and flowers and candles. She will agonize over whether or not she should
invite me, and, in the end, she won’t. Good. I hate fish funerals. I read an
article in the paper about the disaffected youth of Tokyo who take a certain
new drug that makes them feel like they are successful business executives.
So, instead of getting into all kinds of trouble, they stay up all night making
deals. A police spokesman says he approves of the drug, thinks it helps build
character. Crime is down. The kids wake up in the alleys in the morning and
don’t know who they are. Perhaps that is the drug for me. Something will
work out for me. It always does. I’m just like one of those lost geese I saw
today, circling and circling in the sky, no longer remembering the original
plan. But they find a pond somewhere, and it’s pretty good, so they stay and
call it home. What’s so sad about that? Oh, sure, it’s a break with tradition,
and they barely know where they are, but they’re happy in their way. They
fly around every now and then just to show that they can, and then they
crash back onto the pond, and glide around, looking proud. “What
happened?” one of them says. “Shut up,” says the other.


CUE:  A Journal of Prose Poetry
Winter 2004, Volume I, Issue I