Self-Storage

“Doesn’t that feel great?”
asks Aerobia, Goddess of the Body.
Those muscular curls, ribbons of fire
beneath her skin, give good
definition to the wilderness
stashed within. She’s smoothing out
the kinks and nicks:
perfection is necessary in a gift.

That’s why we dress our presents
in foils and tissues.
Lions lie down with lambs
across each Christmas.
There’s a nice democracy to it:
each thing entices equally,
and the trim prolongs the tension
before possession
when lessening begins.
So you want a pet and get
an air conditioner.
From this, you learn to want
what you are given.

When my mother was ill and I was little
I made her a mint jelly sandwich, which she ate
or hid because it was a gift.
The misprisions!
If only we got what we deserved.
In our family, plenty lay naked
beneath the tree on Christmas.
My parents didn’t see the sense in wrapping
what we’d only rush to open.
“Let’s get down to brass tacks.”
That was one of their expressions.
And “Now we’re cooking with gas.”

So I was surprised last summer
to receive boxes done in holly
wreaths and manger scenes from home.
Thick layers of “‘invisible”’
tape held notes reading
“2 kitchen towels,” ‘‘1 nightgown,”
as if to forestall false hopes.
The only mystery was my mother’s candor.
And I was mystified at Christmas
to find she’d wrapped presents
for herself, even tagging them ‘“‘For Mary.”

But all the gifts dropped like hints
of what the giver wants
can’t change the fact
of who is giving.
Whether roses come from boss or lover’s
a distinction like that
between epidermis and skin.
“Though dadgummit,” pants the Goddess,
“there’s a point—four .. . three… two…
one . . .—where it gets compulsive.”

And where’s that? Where |
buyers spend big bucks on little nothings
at the cut-rate malls?
““We cash checks,” each chain implores.
Last Christmas while shopping
I stood still, watching snow
machines forge the hills
to calendar art. “Michigan Collision”
stood beside “‘Self-Storage:”—
cubes holding the dislocated
against fire or theft. Near the freeway
where cars whisked by
like sweepings, the goods

and I stood to just one side.
A child swathed in floral layers
touched my hand
at last like something up for sale.
““That’s not a fake lady,’’ her mother
said, pulling her away.

Personally, I prefer gifts too big to wrap:
the inflammatory abstracts, say—
love, forgiveness, faith—
that sear through any paper
so packaging them’s like fitting
flames into tuxedos.

Perhaps all presents are presumptions.
Giving, we test our affinity
with hidden wishes. Yet asking
changes both desire and deliverance,
as when lovers must say touch me
there. No matter.
Some things we’d gladly have
from any hand. Give us this day
in the pliable rain,
a solitude unlike a lidded wilderness,
a soft death—now
doesn’t that feel great?

I wouldn’t say so. No.
What we want is another and another
day rising behind firm skylines,
a pink ridge shining into brick.
But when wasn’t always not
less with dawn? Oh bright box
ripping in its own good time—