Steps for the Grim Reaper
On the mahogany landing, in the middle of the deck outside,
goslings have gone outsized and berserk,
and if you choose to follow them (i.e., line up your clumsy
scythe behind their fluffy, quivering standard bearer),
I don’t see you keeping appointments for days on end.
Sure, my father and my first wife might love that
beyond the telling, though once you think it through,
swine on the sycamore platform, at the very top of the deck,
will hate to be kept waiting for when walnuts drop
and the pale-green-squash-of-summer-that-any-chef-
can-bring-to-a-boil-and-thereby-duplicate-the-softness-
of-my-true-love’s-upper-arms ripen and burst on their stalks.
No, it’s more likely on the willow landing, near the bottom
of the stairwell, that blue-legged frogs will boast and boast
about the threatening pretence that for once and for all
they’ve become carnivorous and can chomp on fingers
and toes at will (as if your black appendages were over-
baked pretzel sticks), and so for whatever it may be worth,
I have to confide those frogs are what my love and I
would tremble about most if we were you.
| William C. Blome |
|
levelheaded: Steps for the Grim Reaper
At the most basic level, William C. Blome’s instructions for death are simple: live. Blome shares this message not by stating it directly, but by highlighting a beautiful world ripe with peculiar particulars. Details like the “mahogany landing,” “my first wife,” and “swine on the sycamore platform” give the poem life in the face of death. In contrast to the reaper’s “clumsy / scythe” is the goslings’ “fluffy.”
Blome posits that if death were to “follow [the goslings],” that would stop big D from “keeping appointments for days on end.” Here, the word “end” warrants special attention. As if defying the “end” that death is, Blome’s poem is active. It’s less about where the steps lead and more about the stepping.
In no better way is this idea presented in the poem than in the uber-confusing sentence from lines 6-12. Confession: we spent a while unpacking these lines. But now, taking a step back, it seems that the lines main purpose is not to bring us from capital letter to period, but to create vibrant energy between those two markers. And vibrant energy doth Blome create! We get dropping walnuts and“pale-green-squash.” We get a chef bringing something to a boil and “the-softness- / of-my-true-love’s-upper-arms.”
Okay, you might be buying what we’re selling up to this point. You also might be wondering how the hell we’re going to explain the blue-legged carnivorous frogs death should be afraid of. Well, we don’t know for sure what’s going on with those, but the reference to an endangered animal could advice to live our lives while we’ve got them. The frogs placement in the poem is, in itself, a testament to life—weird and unpredictable, bright and ever-evolving.
– The Editors
