Stephen Dobyns
Wind Chimes
Begin with a Victorian cottage in a Rhode Island
resort town—a two-story house of yellow shingles
a block from the ocean with a roof like a Chinese
pagoda and a screened-in porch on three sides.
A wooden croquet set lies scattered on the lawn
which is surrounded by a chest-high privet hedge.
Hanging from the porch ceiling, a wind chimes
with eight glass bars swings gently in a breeze
smelling of salt and fried food from hot dog stands
along the beach. In the middle of the living room,
a boy lies on his stomach reading a Batman comic.
Around him are wicker chairs with white cushions.
The boy's knees are bent and the soles of his tattered
gym shoes point toward the ceiling. As he reads,
he slowly bumps his heels together as if in time
to the sound of the surf he hears in the distance.
A collie dog lies panting at the foot of the stairs,
while in a bedroom at the top of the stairs
a man likes naked on white sheets smoking a cigarette.
His wife, also naked, sleeps with her head on his chest.
As he smokes, the man carelessly strokes her back and
stares up at the lines and angles of the white ceiling
until it seems he's looking down from some high place,
a plane or hilltop. From where he lies, he can just see
the roofs of other houses and he imagines his neighbors
drowsing their way through the August afternoon.
White curtains sway in the breeze from the open window,
while the smoke from his cigarette seems to turn blue
as it rises through bars of sunlight to the ceiling.
From nearby, the man hears the sound of people
playing tennis—an occasional shout and the plonk
of the ball against the webbing of the racket;
from the porch, he hears the tinkling of wind chimes
like a miniature orchestra forever warming up.
Years later the same man is lying fully clothed
on his bed in a city hotel. It is evening and
the only light comes from the street and a blinking
red sign outside his window. He's waiting for a friend
and soon they will go to dinner, but as he waits
he watches the shadows on the ceiling and either
that
reminds him of the wind chimes or perhaps
it is come combination of sounds from the street.
His son is grown up; his wife has remarried.
He himself has a new wife in another city
and he's away from home only because of his work
in which he thinks himself happy and successful.
But for a moment, he clearly hears the wind chimes,
sees the swaying curtains in that summer bedroom,
even feels the faint pressure of his ex-wife's
sleeping head upon his chest. But then
it slips by and in its place he has an awareness
of all the complicated turnings of his life,
and he wonders if what he had seen as progress
was only a scrambling after circumstance, like a boy
trying to scramble into the back of a moving truck;
and while he doesn't regret his life, he grieves
for all that was lost, all that he had to let go.
He thinks of that ocean house and wishes he were back
in his former life or that one could take one moment
and remain inside it like an egg inside its shell,
instead of constantly being hurried into the future
by good luck or bad. Again he hears the wind chimes,
even sees them hanging in the dark with their
eight glass bars and red oriental designs, but then
they begin to get smaller as if quickly receding,
until they are no more than a speck of bright light
which at last blinks out as his friend starts hammering
at the door and his whole busy life rushes forward.
Stephen Dobyns, Velocities: New and Selected Poems 1966-1992, Penguin Books, 1994.