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Home Pond
Late afternoon. Huancayo. We’d made the long haul
down from Ayacucho that morning. Were hungry & tired. Had stumbled
into one of those huge, operatic, down-
restaurants: teardrop chandeliers, candles
in ribbed silver cages, frayed red cloths on the tables.
A building of three red brick walls & one of that massive, grey,
mortarless, hand-
Not a soul in the place but a sleepy middle-
tricked out in the shabby black & white jacket & slacks
of the trade. He brought us two menus, goblets for wine,
& a plate of papas a la Huancaina.
I was unaccountably happy. In one of those silly, insouciant moods
that come out of nowhere, despite the fact that the planet
was falling apart all around us. The previous summer
I’d given the Army the slip, leaving to better men than myself
the task of carpet-
We’d exchanged matrimonial vows in Seattle & then headed south.
Had been bussing for months from town to town thru the Andes.
The truth is, the whole thing had happened by magic. “Hey,
you know the trick where you blow an invisible coin
into a sealed-
stemmed goblet so nothing could enter, & grinned
as if I were going to pluck out of nowhere fishes & loaves.
Mary said No, she didn’t—& laughed, preparing herself
for another fine piece of buffoonery. On the table between us,
though it wasn’t yet dark, the candle was already lit.
In the distance, the endless sierra. I asked her to hand me
a coin, placed it into my palm, recited some hocus-
known only to shamans from Brooklyn, then spread
out my fingers, & lo & behold it had vanished!
So far so good. But that part was easy. What I did next
was harder—to blow that invisible coin into the sealed-
The nice thing was you could see it fall in with a clatter,
hear the luxurious clink of silver in glass as it dropped
out of nowhere & settled. Needless to say, she was amazed.
I mean really amazed! & so too, as it turns out, was our waiter,
who’d been watching the whole affair from the wall by the kitchen,
& flew to my side, flailing his arms like a sinner whose soul
the Holy Spirit had entered—& who knows he is saved.
He wanted to know how I’d done it. How such a thing
could possibly happen. Milagro! I felt like Jesus
raising the dead: a little embarrassed, but pleased
that I’d brought the thing off—& that someone had seen it.
Huancayo. I liked the looks of the place. That sharp
mountain light before dusk. Folks walking around
on the other side of the window in woolen serapes.
If it wouldn’t have sounded so pious, or grandiose,
I’d have said to that fellow: “Friend, how I did it
really isn’t the point; in this world nothing is more or less
amazing than anything else.” But I didn’t. Instead,
I just shrugged, the way that when Lazarus opened his eyes
& shook off the dust & put on his hat, Jesus himself
must have shrugged, as much as to say it was nothing, a trifle.
The three of us chatted a bit & then we checked
out the menus & ordered the meal we’d come in for—me
& Mary, my wife, all wit & forbearance & grace,
who one day had fallen by some sort of miracle into my life.
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