Darren Morris

Watching Jarrell Almost Read a Poem

Randall Jarrell is about to read a poem in front of his Literature class,
at Woman's College in Greensboro, before he became famous.
The term is slowly drawing to a close.
His students, who couldn't care less about Literature,
still leaned close when he cleared his throat. They knew that much.
They knew he was a small man, that his voice was just another lavender
riding the spring breeze, and slight enough that the wind might,
at any moment, carry him away. This is the same wind
on which the heavy, wooden door, marked "A-32,"
groans like the swinging gate of the sin one does not commit,
but thinks of all his life.
It doesn't matter on which side of the door one stands,
but that one stands, and considers this.
Jarrell looks up, betrayed by the interruption.
A girl puts the eraser end of a pencil in her mouth, and leaves
it glued to her bottom lip. The breeze pulls the door
back as if it was cocking a rifle and asking, Who first?
But nothing happens. The door is stayed by nothing.
The most powerful thing created is the space of emptiness,
when the breeze brushes by us, the moment before it
begins filling again. Jarrell shudders and thinks of
the student in his class who always described every metaphor
the same way, as wild horses running along the beach.
He tries to begin again, and again the wind rushes through
the hallways; and the vacuum, which ensues,
coaxes the stridulous door to a pitch almost desperate.
The class laughs aloud this time.
Jarrell himself laughs, and they all wait for the possibility,
wait and watch together, strung in the hinged kinetic,
hoping as the door floats uneasy on the current.
One way or the other.
Each sees it totter and guesses--What is passing us?
What has us so inclined to be drawn?
The answers come when the door slams shut
like a period ending a sentence. However,
to one among them, it can be assured, the sound
is like stampeding horses and grains of sand.
It may be permanence, which is delusion, which
is the tradition. But to Jarrell, someone has
decided to quit them, permanently;
to leave them all on their own. It is a reminder
of that which is already done. But to most
it was simply tornado season in North Carolina.

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Darren Morris lives in Richmond, Virginia. He received a fellowship in fiction from the Virginia Commission for the Arts in 2000. photograph by Robert Isaacs contents | previous