To California, Wine, Politics, Turtles, Nihilism, and My Heart, by Adam Scheffler

After Kenneth Koch

What a jumble,
I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have all of you here
Especially you wine and politics!
Though you my heart and turtles go together always
And even politics and turtles sounds good.

But in any case here you all are:
I wake up and my heart is holding you all like a shopping cart
Full of hasty impulse purchases

With California sticking out the back cartoonishly
Amidst the wine it’s known for
And politics snuggling next to but never quite touching nihilism,
While turtles migrate towards California
(Great swimmers as they are).

I hoped having you all here, you would form perfect
Checks and balances, or at least rock paper
Scissors’ sort of brutal but reassuring system,
My heart beating nihilism, though nihilism beats wine
Which kills turtles, which beat politics
Unable to crack the vaults of their shells,
As they crawl lurching through the woods.

But instead I find each of you
Aloof and dignified as a star,
And it seems I got it backwards with you
California, everyone moving west toward you
Except me who starts in you and goes east
Despite your good wines and the promptings of my heart.

I still like you and I’ve recently begun
Tolerating even you, politics.

And you turtles, can keep me from ever
Getting too serious or abstract
It’s not unrelated to wine, the feeling I get when I see you.
I compare my galloping heart to your slow careful one –
I imagine it strong and scaly as you are –
I like how underwater your heart beats only once
Every nine minutes: it’s like you’re dead,
But then again, and again,
Come back to life.

*

Adam Scheffler grew up in California, received his MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his PhD in English from Harvard. His first book of poems – A Dog’s Life– was selected by Denise Duhamel as the winner of the 2016 Jacar Press Book Contest. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Yale Review, The Common, The American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Rattle, Plume, Barrow Street, and others. He teaches in the Harvard College Writing Program.