Yesterday when the leaves blew off the elm
I looked out the window of the third-floor landing
eye to eye with the squirrel that used to be there
and saw a silk hat hung on the upper trunk.
“There’s a top hat in the elm,” I told my wife.
“Why?” she said. “This isn’t Thursday, is it?”
“As a matter of fact, it is,” I told her. “Drat!”
she said. “I’ve known all day I was late for something!”
“Take the car,” I said. It wasn’t Thursday.
I wanted her out of the way while I climbed the ladder,
as I knew I must. She would have screamed, “You’ll fall!”
And I would have fallen. I am subject to suggestion.
But once she was gone, I could make it. I said to myself,
“Of course you can make it.” And having said so, I did.
I had guessed the topper was hung on a twig. It wasn’t:
it was fixed to the trunk by a shingle-nail through the brim.
I had no hammer and had to rip it off
leaving a silken ink-stain on the bark
with a nail-head in it. The hat was buff-new.
The leather band was stamped in gold: “A.T.”
Arturo Toscanini? The silk of the crown
bore an embroidered label: “Strega-Milano.”
It confirmed my guess. When I reached in, a dove
unfurled in my hand. Thank God it wasn’t a rabbit:
I couldn’t have carried it down and the fall would have made
a military splash in my pachysandra.
I didn’t reach in again. I let the dove go.
The thing kept coming back with olive branches.
“Stop it!” I said. “It wasn’t that wet a summer.
I don’t much like green olives. And why make a Bible
of what began as simple curiosity?”
There was also the fact that heights make me dizzy:
I had to get down. And since I needed both hands
for my death grip on the ladder, I put the hat on.
I should have known better. My wife came into my head.
I saw in greater detail than was necessary
what she had been late for. So now, Arvin Tremblow!
– Imagine thinking it might have been Toscanini!
“I’d best get down,” I said. And found myself down.
I knew then. “This is bigger than we are,” the dove said.
When I went indoors after pointing the cat at the dove,
the phone was ringing. “It’s bigger than we are,” it said.
“I know,” I told her. “Will you need the car?”
– “Only to fetch my things.” — “I’ll have them ready.”
“Thank you for understanding,” she said. I shrugged.
“It happens,” I said. “The leaves blow off and one sees.
Drive carefully. This rush hour traffic kills.”
Later I thanked the sergeant who phoned to tell me.
Then I phoned Fay Morticians and made the arrangements.
Then I sat down with a fresh bottle of bourbon
and thought of Natalie Krink. I said aloud,
“Am I only thinking through my hat?” —“Not really,”
she said, coming in like spring, “but take it off.”
So I took it off, and it was my wife again.
“You finished the whole bottle!” she said. I nodded.
A man must do what he can when his love leaves him.
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