APAvar: Ruefle, Mary (2023). The Book. Wave Books Link: https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/the-book
Epigraph:
They're gone now. It makes me sad to think about it.
Feeling old, for no reason at all
I picked a bit of mint from the ditch.
page 8: Nettles
If everyone were a storyteller, the infrastructure of the village would collapse. With more than one teller—with so many—contention and conflict would ensue. The one true storyteller—who can say which one?—would be compelled to retire to a cave and sit silent for ten years, eating nothing but nettles and drinking the tea that can be made from them. When he (she? they?) came out, the village would be going about its daily business, digging tubers, nursing babies, drying meat, all of which had already been put into a story by everyone else, so that no story would be left to tell, except the story of the one true storyteller, how he had lived in a cave for ten years, nettled by his own silence, and had at last emerged and found no one willing to listen.
pages 45-46: excerpt from Dear Friends
... I had a friend in high school, I had a crush on him, he was gay but I didn't know it. ... I found out years later. ... We were in our thirties then, and he was dying of AIDS. I mean, he had AIDS and knew he would probably die but was not certain; he didn't want to die but he did come to see me, twice, in what turned out to be the last year of his life. We sat in a diner in the middle of Michigan and he told me all this stuff that was going on in high school that I had been completely unaware of. None of the gay guys in high school had come out, and he talked about that, about how he knew I had a crush on him but he couldn't bring himself to tell me he was gay. We actually laughed about it, we were in our thirties and considered ourselves grown-ups, adults. Later I found out that I was not grown-up at thirty, but he never found out, he died before he could find out he wasn't a grown-up. Sitting in the diner I said to him I am so sorry. And he said why, because I am gay? I said no, not that; because you are going to die. And he said I don't want to die, but, you know, these things happen. These things happen—I think in that moment I must have grown up, but later I lapsed into childhood again, and it was another thirty years before I remembered his words—these things happen—and by then I had lost countless friends and family members, by then his words seemed the simplest statement of the truth I had ever heard.
page 81: Chilly Observation
Do you know the story of the woman who went to a taverna in Greece, her table was set on the beach, after a while the tide came in, the water covered her legs and the legs of the table and the waiter continued to serve her, going back and forth from the kitchen as if nothing were happening? People often wonder what it is like to be old, and a few actually ask.