#197: The Remedy by Tim Mayo

 ~ This poem was first published in River Styx (2011).

You were fat in those days: neglect

had slipped like a towel from your waist

showing the whole world the soft rolls of yourself.

How it all glowed under your skin

like a radium dial,

becoming in the end:

a thick envelope for a thin heart.

And on summer nights, when the heat

dripped off the leaves like fat caterpillars,

you’d hang out sniffing cognac, putting on airs

in the only class restaurant around.

Those were the days when haute cuisine

were still foreign words

meaning something more than meatloaf.

How it moved you purposely along

up an invisible ladder

toward some new decorum.

Still, you dared to ask the slim dishwasher,

her first night ever on a job,

to go for a swim after work.

She was a young slip of a blonde with corkscrew hair,

whose father had wired your house and whose lightning wrath

you had never known,

but always feared

like a biblical child fears his Maker.

Nonetheless, somewhere in that part of your brain,

where things dwelled under the surface,

as quiet as crocodiles,                                    

you both knew the pitter-patter

and thump of your intent.                      

*

There is a safety in numbers

when a handful of strangers all begin to disrobe at once,

side by side,

in the sweltering privacy of their own dark space.

Everyone concentrates so hard

to liberate their right foot

from the left leg of their lonely lives,

they see nothing else, and nakedness goes unnoticed.

(But let’s forget about the others.

They are irrelevant.)

The two of you slip into the water

as pat as opposable thumbs.

You swim out to the raft

where a host of faceless bodies

loll about like Romans.

The idea of numbers is still in play.

Then, one by one, the faceless bathers

roll off the raft and swim away,

taking with them the peeled grapes

and nibbling minnows of their hands,

and only the two of you are left to count the stars.

*

You know how it is about the dark,

how even in a moonless sky

the night stars can seem strong enough

to show you things as if it were day.                        

That’s when you noticed                    

the statuary-beauty of her body,

(as if your art had suddenly found art)      

but what you remember most about that night,

and knew you would,

as you stood watching

her leggy presence

cross and uncross itself,

before she reached up to, finally,

clasp her hands behind the bustle of curls

bedding her head

––so unabashedly at ease––so unafraid––willing to show you––

every delicate portion and pocket

of her being,

that it was hard to believe she was that young,

and that you did not touch her––not out of fear––

nor youth––nor even any unwritten law of decency––

but out of an inkling that, one day, this memory

of her fearless poise would be more precious

to you than what you sought.

*****

THE STORY BEHIND THIS POEM

We don’t always know where epiphany comes from, but, nonetheless, this shouldn’t stop us from acting on it anyway.  “The Remedy” is part of a full length collection I am hoping will be published soon, which, among other themes, explores the body and desire.  The poem relates a somewhat tongue-in-cheek story of a young man who is both physically and spiritually full of himself yet manages––at the last minute and quite by accident––to see something important . . . a sort of remedy to his ways. 

*****

  

ABOUT TIM MAYO

Tim Mayo’s poems and reviews have appeared in Barrow Street, Poetry International, Poet Lore, River Styx, San Pedro River Review, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. His collection The Kingdom of Possibilities was published by Mayapple Press in 2009. He is a five time Pushcart Prize Nominee and has been a top finalist for the annual Paumanok Award.  For more information and links to hear him read go to : https://www.pen.org/tim-mayo/member