Keats

            He doesn’t hesitate, in fact, his chin is high and his large hands go taught with excitement, the right slamming down onto the plastic table like a gavel.

            The poetry of the earth is never dead!

            The poetry of the earth is never dead, I echo, that’s your choice for the best line of all of literature?

            Outside the camper, the winds ride the earth at a gallop, the speed of them thundering into the metal of the vehicle.  There are four candles lit on the makeshift stove behind him.  It is dark.  It is loud. 

            My incredulity doesn’t sway him though, his irises, black in this chiascuro painting of a scene, rolls back into his head.   He laughs, Yeah, your disdain of the romantics is well documented, Jems, but even you can admit that line is a perfect summation of everything we hold dear in life.

            I don’t know.  I mean, here’s the thing – even though he wasn’t outrightly the sort of wanker that wrote about his wankings, I can never escape the feeling that Keats was always writing about writing, and god, how boring is that?  Why is the language of the earth a writer’s language? Motherfucker, the earth is a man of science! I mean – I mean – goddammit, whatever!  You know we can’t talk about the romantics and Keats. You know I get worked up; you know where that always ends.

            I bring the palms of my hands to my eyes, and sneak a glance at Marge, supine and breathing evenly on the makeshift futon, her robe bunched up around her waist, her center laced in red, inviting were it not for the whiskey on her tongue and the decades on her skin.  When I look back at Billy, he has gone still, his right hand still flat on the table, his spine curved toward me.

            God, how did we get into this situation, I think, talking literature again in some godforsaken desert in a strange woman’s Volkswagen.  I knew it would happen; it was always the same with Billy – always posing these hypotheses, and the chemical storm always followed him around like the answer to the equation.  This time the proposed was, Hey, wouldn’t it be great to watch a desert snowstorm? There’s one on the forecast for Friday at Joshua Tree.  His enthusiasm for the scheme was genuine, and I knew what would happen, because the science of the earth is certain, but I said yes, and the storm painted itself down onto our backs.

            And of course, of course, we offered our tent up to the gods of the prevailing westerlies, and of course, of course, our campsite neighbor had to be Marge, concave chest and translucent hands around a warm bottle of Jack; Marge and her Volkswagen empty and arms open in invitation.

            All but one candle has gone out.  I study Billy, floppy hair, large hands, love of Keats.  Now there is only a halo of light around his silhouette; visually there is nothing else, but I know that there on his face are blue eyes, soft and pliant, and there are lips, lips that promise me the immortal poetry of the earth.

            I think briefly of home, and what I will come back to on Monday.

            He says, and I hear the downturn of his mouth, The poetry of the earth is ceasing never: on a lone winter evening, when the frost has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills the Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever.  The poetry of the earth is never dead.

            The earth seems to respond to his recitation of Keats; the storm outside swings to its final allegro, and now we can hear the odd, sharp twang from something more solid than air striking our shelter.

            Fuck you.  Fuck you, I say. God fucking dammit, and I reach out, take the blue cotton of his shirt into my fist, and drag him out into the wind.