434
PARTISAN REVIEW
without wetting her feet. When it becomes deep , she dives and surfaces
a hundred yards out with a strong dolphin kick in time to see Tim 's
sleek body surfacing behind her, but when he grabs her he grabs
bubbles. From high in the air we watch her strong stroking and her
legs streaming behind her. He drifts up bright as a quarter from the
green depths and they swim together for a while, feeling how easily
their naked bodies slide through the water. They come together while
fish stroke indifferently beneath their legs. The next time they come
together she wraps her legs around his waist. Her breasts surge up in
the water. Their skins are slippery in the cool water. But her vaginal
mucus has dissolved, so they come ashore, direttly to where we are
hiding in the tall grass, and make love in the itchy grass, where his face
becomes a swarm of bees and her nipples point to heaven. Two suns
meet at the water's edge as we whoop and giggle all the way to our
kitchens where our dinners are waiting.
Tim and Ava go to town to buy chains for their bicycles and long
underwear for the cold. Summer has gone and fall is sharp as a knife.
Tim likes Ava 's gooseflesh and how her nipples grow hard as wood–
knots. She likes his ribs because when she touches them he laughs. But
they are alone in their ancient farmhouse between immense fields of
black soil and fields of tiny leaves which hang yellow and quivering.
And they are afraid of the brick colored swine which bellow outside the
windows, and of the big-toothed country boys who smile at the wheels
of their air devouring pick-ups. Late in the night they sit in silence,
then leap into each other's arms when a squirrel runs across the roof.
And they scare each other in bed with stories about the fourteen axes.
This is Tim in front of a pile of cinderblocks which I am going to build
into a wall as high as the tips of my fingers, to keep off polar bears and
jackadillos. Ava wOl!ld like to be in the picture, but she is holding the
camera. Now this is Ava when Ava's friend the oboist has come to visit.
And the eighth goose joins the strange bulks in the moonlight and Tim
marvels at their brave and boring lives .
The oboist has befriended the geese. She serenades them on the beach
and invites them into the living room where they are comfortable. The
oboist is lonely and she makes a noise like a goose, "Oh no. Oh no ."
Brown onionskins drift to the floor. She opens the black velvet box and
it is red velvet inside and empty. And Ava, who is cutting onions for
soup, announces that she will sing a song (Tim is dragging trees
through the woods) about love, entitled
Tears, Idle Tears:
