I Run into Count Ugolino
                               

I run into Count Ugolino on the autumn day when
I finally start scraping frost from my windshield.
It's destiny, this meeting—we've been
avoiding it for years. I'm proud of the way
I maintain my composure, glad that Dante
is standing beside me, glad that the crazed Count
has finally stopped gnawing Ruggieri's head.
“Quite a meal!” I comment dryly to Dante and he gives
a feeling nod. I toss Ruggieri's skull into the trunk,
then we all pile into my car and take
the back road to Indianapolis so we can admire
the abandoned trees tossing in their jazzy silks.
Ugolino needs a break, and his creator looks as if
he could use some fresh inspiration. I don't mind
when the poet lights up his pipe, but I keep
an uneasy eye on the Count's jittery hands. If this
were Rome, we'd drive to the Baths of Caracalla,
find a steamroom where our exhausted bodies
would disrobe and be anointed with the sweetness
of wax and oil. We're all so tired, it seems
to happen in October—that hiss of sadness
whenever the icy wind hits Lake Michigan's
scalding waves. I worry when Ugolino shifts in his seat
to sit on his hands, I'm frantic to break
the silence but I let Dante do it for me—he's
writing an impassioned essay on the émigré poet
that he will read at two o'clock this afternoon
in a hotel ballroom somewhere in the city.
He's headed for a life of scholarship now that
the poetry well is dry. I remember the artist
who had to kill herself one day in a bathtub
when her paintings were no longer a solace,
I imagine the hushed tongue of her paintbrush,
the new canvas whitening into a sea of smoke.
I know how Ugolino's wild eyes stared into the
ice fog that came rolling over his tower window—
when it lifted there was only a frostwork of
thin blue hieroglyphs spinning on the glass.
By the time we turn off for lunch, Dante
is scribbling furiously at his clipboard and
the Count's brutal mouth is nibbling a pencil—
I'm not hungry, I just want to fly into the red mist
of a mountain ash and tear at the bitter berries with my teeth.
Instead I freeze when the trunk key turns in its lock
and I see the Count grinding at Ruggieri like a dog.
Back on the road, Dante reads us his final draft—
he is speaking and weeping all the way into the city,
he goes on right up to the hotel door. Ugolino wipes
his mouth on Ruggieri's hair and mutely waves goodbye.
I leave them both lost in contemplation outside
the Marriott. Why does it always happen in the fall,
this wanting to walk every field of rosy stubble
with Dante or Keats? It goes on—the deep longing
for thought, the wind's feverish reverie as it strips
the orchard of leaves. It goes on—the rumination of memory,
the mind's profusion caught in a rubbing click and chirr.
It happens over and over. The way the eyes begin
to narrow. The snap of jaws starting to work.