THE GREAT DOUBTERS OF HISTORY

- by Stephen Dobyns

The woman who kicked out the back window
of the police car sits chain-smoking and
drinking at the table of the dance floor.
Watching from a barstool, you doubt she
weights over a hundred pounds.

She is gaunt, bony
and resembles a fierce pygmy
warrior. One time she ripped her clothes
in the parking lot, defied police to touch her.

Another time she pursued a patrolman
down the street, then kicked him in the balls.
Maybe she's twenty. Here in the bar she
seems jittery, can't hold her liquor, people
tell you, which is probably true, but you also
respect some who knows she
has nothing to lose.

But you also have nothing to lose but
spend much of you time telling yourself
you do.

In fact the point of society is to
make people think they have something to lose
until a man goes through life as nervously
as if he were carrying a teetery
stack of plates up a dark flight of stairs.

When the women who kicked out the window
of the cop car dances, she shrugs her shoulders
and stamps her feet very fast as if she
weren't dancing but stamping on a multitude
of grievances. Mostly she dances by herself
because few men will ask her.

You nearly ask
her, then change your mind, telling yourself
you are too shy; but really you fear that you too
are something she can easily let go,
fear she'll see through your equivocations,
realize you think you have something to lose
and simply guffaw. Why dance with her at all?

Perhaps you think she might instruct you how
to shove aside the trappings of your life,
because in her life nothing's there for keeps,
or so it seems, and you wish you had that
freedom from the things you own, but you don't
so at last you give it up and go home.

It is a clear spring night. In the parking lot,
two cops lean against their cruiser, staring
at the sky and idly waiting for trouble.

Are you the bad guts? Walking to your car
you think of the fabric of value that surrounds you
as like the night itself, as if you could
poke your finger through it, as if the spots
of light you call stars were the places where
the great doubters of history had jabbed their thumbs.

The younger cop nods hello. You wonder
if they are waiting for the fierce young woman
and if you should protect her, remove your
clothes and shout: 'Take me, take me.'

But you're not
the one they want in jail. You may have doubts,
but none to break the law for.

As you drive home
beside the ocean, the moonpath follows you
on the water like a long finger of light.
'Blame me,' you say, 'go ahead, blame me.'

Tomorrow you'll buy something you think you need,
ditto the next day, ditto the day after that.

Once home, you close and lock yourself inside,
as if you were both guard and prisoner -
prisoner with a question mark to your future
and no days off for your best behavior.

- Stephen Dobyns, American poet