Roy Jacobstein

I guess I'll be up there with all of them,
      Allah, Krishna, Yahweh, God, speeding
           along, shooting the shit with the Hims, 

asking Him and Him do they too love
      the names of these rivers the way I do,
           Irrawaddy, Orinoco, Limpopo, Snake,

the banyans & cottonwoods & teaks
      that overhang their banks, salmon & pike
           that teem beneath—& isn't it great how 

piano in Papuan Pidgin is big black box 
      with teeth you hit him he cry, & even though 
            the mosquito transmits malaria & dengue

& thus has vexed untold millions unto 
      this day, & the spirochete causes yaws, 
            aren't both elegant beings—the angel-

winged tuning-fork vibrato of the former; 
      the latter so sinuous & svelte & beguiling  
            under the scope—& speaking of speeding, 

what about that Audi Quattro, how it accelerates,
      0 to 60 in 5.3 seconds (though you're definitely 
            playing dice with your life when you tool out 

onto the Beltway into the morning rush, 
      flitting between those minivans & cement 
            mixers, 18-wheelers & SUVs), & if you stop

to think about it, what's the hurry anyway— 
      the Times reports 97% of American workers 
            say they'd quit their jobs in a trice if they hit 

the lottery. (Me, I always play numbers 
      3, 17 & 1789, in honor of Saint Patrick 
            & of Voltaire, Rousseau & the other lights

of the French Revolution, those philosophes 
      sans whose Rights of Man we'd be spinning 
           purposelessly atop the fragile tectonic plates 

atop the hissing molten core.) I guess it'll take
      a week or two for me to get back to the Hims
            (nary a molecule of Ritalin lacing the cocktail

that is my blood), but when I finally arrive 
      maybe I won't shoot the shit after all, not 
            babble about the baobabs, the Monongahela, 

maybe I'll just sit still there & regard 
      the dread shape, the fearsome visage 
           (cross between an Ayatollah & a Mather, 

I imagine, proving the imagination 
      is influenced unduly by the news media 
           & by high school), & for the good of all 

I'll stare into His remorseless eye & enquire 
      if indeed the Existentialists had gotten it right, 
            He'd created this world, then given it up, cast 

His lot elsewhere, out there past 
      the moons of Pluto, sick as He was 
           of our whining & scribbling & warring— 

though admit it, didn't He sometimes miss 
      the water hyacinth floating swiftly along 
            the Mekong after the rains, the ineffable 

downward curve of the weeping willows, 
       the intoxicating scent of jasmine at dusk, 
            Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major, 

& the dinosaurs.  


Copyright © Roy Jacobstein All rights reserved

The Gettysburg Review, Autumn 2005
Special Mention, 2007 Pushcart Prize anthology