All of Us by Raymond Carver Read Free Book Online

mind is sick tonight.
Prosser
    In winter two kinds of fields on the hills
    outside Prosser: fields of new green wheat, the slips
    rising overnight out of the plowed ground,
    and waiting,
    and then rising again, and budding.
    Geese love this green wheat.
    I ate some of it once too, to see.
    And wheat stubble-fields that reach to the river.
    These are the fields that have lost everything.
    At night they try to recall their youth,
    but their breathing is slow and irregular as
    their life sinks into dark furrows.
    Geese love this shattered wheat also.
    They will die for it.
    But everything is forgotten, nearly everything,
    and sooner rather than later, please God —
    fathers, friends, they pass
    into your life and out again, a few women stay
    a while, then go, and the fields
    turn their backs, disappear in rain.
    Everything goes, but Prosser.
    Those nights driving back through miles of wheat fields —
    headlamps raking the fields on the curves —
    Prosser, that town, shining as we break over hills,
    heater rattling, tired through to bone,
    the smell of gunpowder on our fingers still:
    I can barely see him, my father, squinting
    through the windshield of that cab, saying, Prosser.
At Night the Salmon Move
    At night the salmon move
    out from the river and into town.
    They avoid places with names
    like Foster’s Freeze, A & W, Smiley’s,
    but swim close to the tract
    homes on Wright Avenue where sometimes
    in the early morning hours
    you can hear them trying doorknobs
    or bumping against Cable TV lines.
    We wait up for them.
    We leave our back windows open
    and call out when we hear a splash.
    Mornings are a disappointment.
With a Telescope Rod on Cowiche Creek
    Here my assurance drops away. I lose
    all direction. Gray Lady
    onto moving waters. My thoughts
    stir like ruffed grouse
    in the clearing across the creek.
    Suddenly, as at a signal, the birds
    pass silently back into pine trees.
Poem for Dr Pratt, a Lady Pathologist
    •
    Last night I dreamt a priest came to me
    holding in his hands white bones,
    white bones in his white hands.
    He was gentle,
    not like Father McCormick with his webbed fingers.
    I was not frightened.
    •
    This afternoon the maids come with their mops
    and disinfectant. They pretend I’m not
    there, talk of menstrual cycles as they
    push my bed this way and that. Before leaving,
    they embrace. Gradually, the room
    fills with leaves. I am afraid.
    •
    The window is open. Sunlight.
    Across the room a bed creaks, creaks
    under the weight of lovemaking.
    The man clears his throat. Outside,
    I hear sprinklers. I begin to void.
    A green desk floats by the window.
    •
    My heart lies on the table, a parody
    of affection, while her fingers rummage
    the endless string of entrails.
    These considerations aside,
    after all those years of adventure in the Far East,
    I am in love with these hands, but
    I’m cold beyond imagining.
Wes Hardin: From a Photograph
    Turning through a collection
        of old photographs
    I come to a picture of the outlaw,
        Wes Hardin, dead.
    He is a big, moustached man
        in a black suitcoat
    on his back over a boardfloor
        in Amarillo, Texas.
    His head is turned at the camera
        and his face
    seems bruised, the hair
        jarred loose.
    A bullet has entered his skull
        from behind
    coming out a little hole
        over his right eye.
    Nothing so funny about that
        but three shabby men
    in overalls stand grinning
        a few feet away.
    They are all holding rifles
        and that one
    at the end has on what must be
        the outlaw’s hat.
    Several other bullets are dotted
        here and there
    under the fancy white shirt
        the deceased is wearing
    — in a manner of speaking —
        but what makes me stare
    is this large dark bullethole
        through the slender, delicate-looking
                                                    right hand.
Marriage
    In our cabin we