The Oil Man


The oil man is here, my grandmother announced
In a voice mingling edginess with resignation
And tinged by the asp's tongue of contempt. I always
Marveled at the scabs that had formed over her wounds.
The oil man is here, my mother announced
In a happy voice that never had been
Shot at or herded into a town square before dawn.
She told my grandmother that this was America.
No one nurtured mourning here.

The slightly flattened cylinder of the heating oil truck
Has not changed over decades. Any number of wars,
Police actions, skirmishes, ideological vendettas
Have not changed the oil man's squarish, felt cap.

Every drop of oil is the earth's blood, a sensitive
Girlfriend once told me while I was putting a quart into
My '64 Ford. Is that good or bad? I asked her.
Sometimes it's hard to make sense of metaphor.
No wonder it largely keeps to poetry.

I had an Ethical Culture teacher who told us to
Beware of anthropomorphism. God was not a person but
A process. Incredibly enough, Mr. Silberman
Had grown up in Shanghai. He was a Taoist Jew,
An incompatibility that seemed to disturb him no more than
The oil man is disturbed by the horizon of unrenewable finitude
That hovers above the earth like a corona of smog.
The oil man whistles as he stands by the hose
That he has attached to the tank that is regulated by
The thermostat. Comfort buries imagination and oil is oil,
Which is to say the dark tears of oblivion. When a furnace
Turns on, another time-ghost suspires.

My wary grandmother and smiling mother are both gone.
Diligently I shake hands with the oil man but say nothing.
Words resist me. I can never burn their airy juice.