Chris, the internet reader, sent me this link . If you have any interest in Bruce Springsteen, it is one of those ìmust reads.î

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Susan arrived yesterday as I was putting dinner on the table. Matt did his caged lion act, forced to sit with us twice as long as normal. After dinner, he bolted to Willow Books while we went to – where else? – Ericksonís Ice-cream .

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Sent by a friend: Coin Operator

Last night we saw The Phantom of the Opera. In Diane’s words,”Who knew we’d see something so good?” If I were a theater reviewer my column would have one word – “Go.”

Matt brought his friend, Debbie, and we arrived early so we could have dinner before the play. Matt, the skeptic, kept asking me, “So, Dad (my capital), where are we eating?” He knew I had no idea, but he asked the same question every fifteen minutes or so.

We parked in a lot across from The Opera House, and after looking up and the down the street, but seeing no restaurants, I immediately asked the lot attendant for a recommendation. He pointed down the street, past the playhouse, and said,”There are plenty in that direction.” After walking a few blocks and seeing nothing but a Wendy’s and a pizzeria, Matt asked again, “So Dad, where are we going to eat.” I stopped at a sidewalk cart, the vendor selling t-shirts, and popped the question. He said, apologetically, “I only work here.”

We walked another two blocks when Diane spied Kennedy’s Irish Pub and Steak House a block away, up a side street. It was – even Matt had to admit – perfect. I had salmon, Diane crab cakes (not enough crab for Linda), Matt a huge hamburger with barbecue sauce and Debbie a gloppy, cheesy pasta plate. I didn’t say the food was perfect.

On the way home I played Springsteen’s new CD , Devils and Dust. I love it, but I knew Diane would hate it – the repetitive beat, Bruce’s unintelligible mumbling ( far worse than Nebraska), the dirge-like quality (not quite as funereal as Tom Joad) so I kept it low until Matt said, “If you insist on playing horrible music, at least turn it up so we can hear it.”

Averno

Louise Gluck

Averno. Ancient name, Avernus. A small crater lake, ten miles west of Naples, Italy; regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld.

1

You die when your spirit dies.
Otherwise, you live.
You may not do a good job of it, but you go on —
something you have no choice about.

When I tell this to my children
they pay no attention.
The old people, they think–
this is what they always do:
talk about things no one can see
to cover up all the brain cells theyíre losing.
They wink at each other;
listen to the old one, talking about the spirit
because he canít remember anymore the word for chair.

It is terrible to be alone.
I donít mean to live alone–
to be alone, where no one hears you.

I remember the word for chair.
I want to say–Iím just not interested anymore.

I wake up thinking
you have to prepare.
Soon the spirit will give up–
all the chairs in the world wonít help you.

I know what they say when Iím out of the room.
Should I be seeing someone, should I be taking
one of the new drugs for depression.
I can hear them, in whispers, planning how to divide the cost.

And I want to scream out
youíre all of you living in a dream.

Bad enough, they think, to watch me falling apart.
Bad enough without this lecturing they get these days
as though I had any right to this new information.

Well, they have the same right.

Theyíre living in a dream, and Iím preparing
to be a ghost. I want to shout out

the mist has cleared–
Itís like some new life:
you have no stake in the outcome;
you know the outcome.

Think of it: sixty years sitting in chairs. And now the mortal spirit
seeking so openly, so fearlessly–

To raise the veil.
To see what youíre saying goodbye to.

2

I didnít go back for a long time.
When I saw the field again, autumn was finished.
Here, it finishes almost before it starts–
the old people donít even own summer clothing.

The field was covered with snow, immaculate.
There wasnít a sign of what happened here.
You didnít know whether the farmer
had replanted or not.
Maybe he gave up and moved away.

The police didnít catch the girl.
After awhile they said she moved to some other country,
one where they donít have fields.

A disaster like this
leaves no mark on the earth.
And people like that–they think it gives them
a fresh start.

I stood a long time, staring at nothing.
After a bit, I noticed how dark it was, how cold.

A long time–I have no idea how long.
Once the earth decides to have no memory
time seems in a way meaningless.

But not to my children. Theyíre after me
to make a will; theyíre worried the government
will take everything.

They should come with me sometime
to look at this field under the cover of snow.
The whole thing is written out there.

Nothing: I have nothing to give them.

Thatís the first part.
The second is: I donít want to be burned.

3

On one side, the soul wanders.
On the other, human beings living in fear.
In between, the pit of disappearance.

Some young girls ask me
if theyíll be safe near Averno–
theyíre cold, they want to go south a little while.
And one says, like a joke, but not too far southó

I say, as safe as anywhere
which makes them happy.
What it means is nothing is safe.

You get on a train, you disappear.
You write your name on the window, you disappear.
There are places like this everywhere,
places you enter as a young girl,
from which you never return.

Like the field, the one that burned.
Afterward, the girl was gone.
Maybe she didnít exist,
we have no proof either way.

All we know is:
the field burned.
But we saw that.

So we have to believe in the girl,
in what she did. Otherwise
itís just forces we donít understand
ruling the earth.

The girls are happy, thinking of their vacation.
Donít take a train, I say.

They write their names in mist on a train window.
I want to say, youíre good girls,
trying to leave your names behind.

4

We spent the whole day
sailing the archipelago,
the tiny islands that were part of the peninsula

until theyíd broken off
into the fragments you see now
floating in the northern sea water.

They seemed safe to me,
I think because no one can live there.

Later we sat in the kitchen
watching the evening start and then the snow.
First one, then the other.

We grew silent, hypnotized by the snow
as though a kind of turbulence
that had been hidden before
was becoming visible,

something within the night
exposed nowó

In our silence, we were asking
those questions friends who trust each other
ask out of great fatigue,
each one hoping the other knows more

and when this isnít so, hoping
their shared impressions will amount to insight.

Is there any benefit in forcing upon oneself
the realization that one must die?
Is it possible to miss the opportunity of oneís life?

Questions like that.

The snow heavy. The black night
transformed into busy white air.

Something we hadnít seen revealed.
Only the meaning wasnít revealed.

5

After the first winter, the field began to grow again.
But there were no more orderly furrows.
The smell of the wheat persisted, a kind of random aroma
intermixed with various weeds, for which
no human use has been as yet devised.

It was puzzlingóno one knew
where the farmer had gone.
Some people thought he died.
Someone said he had a daughter in New Zealand,
that he went there to raise
grandchildren instead of wheat.

Nature, it turns out, isnít like us;
it doesnít have a warehouse of memory.
The field doesnít become afraid of matches,
of young girls. It doesnít remember
furrows either. It gets killed off, it gets burned,
and a year later itís alive again
as though nothing unusual has occurred.

The farmer stares out the window.
Maybe in New Zealand, maybe somewhere else.
And he thinks: my life is over.
His life expressed itself in that field;
he doesnít believe anymore in making anything
out of earth. The earth, he thinks,
has overpowered me.

He remembers the day the field burned,
not, he thinks, by accident.
Something deep within him said: I can live with this,
I can fight it after awhile.

The terrible moment was the spring after his work was erased,
when he understood that the earth
didnít know how to mourn, that it would change instead.
And then go on existing without him.