Everything Can Be Beautiful, in the Just-right Light

The Odd Last Thing She did

by Brad Leithauser

A car is idling on the cliff.
Its top is down. Its headlights throw
A faint, bright ghost-shadow glow
On the pale air. On the shore, so far
Below that the waves' push and drag
Is dwindled to a hush—a kind
Of oceanic idle—the sea

Among the boulders plays a blind-
Fold game of hide and seek,
Or capture the flag. The flag
Swells and sways. The car
Is empty. A Friday, the first week
Of June. Nineteen fifty-three.

A car's idling on the cliff,

But surely it won't be long before

Somebody stops to investigate

And things begin to happen fast:

Men, troops of men will come,

Arrive with blazing lights, a blast

Of sirens, followed by still more

Men. Though not a soul's in sight,

The peace of the end of the late

Afternoon—the sun down, but enough light

Even so to bathe the heavens from

Horizon to shore in a deep

And delicate blue—will not keep.

Confronted with such an overload

Of questions (most beginning, Why would she...

So gifted, bright, and only twenty-three),

Attention will come to fix upon

This odd last thing she did: leaving

The car running, the headlights on.

She stopped—it will transpire—to fill

The tank a mere two miles down the road.

(Just sixteen, the kid at the station will

Quote her as saying, "What a pity

You have to work today! It's not right...

What weather! Goodness, what a night

It'll be!" He'll add: "She sure was pretty.")

Was there a change of plan?

Why the stop for gas? Possibly

She'd not yet made up her mind? Or

Had made it up but not yet settled

On a place? Or could it be she knew

Where she was headed, what she would do—

And wanted to make sure the car ran

For hours afterward? Might the car not be,

Then, a sort of beacon, a lighthouse-

In-reverse, meant to direct one not

Away from but toward the shore

And its broken boulders, there to spot

The bobbing white flag of a blouse?

Her brief note, which will appear

In the local Leader, contains a phrase

("She chanted snatches of old lands")

That will muddle the town for three days,

Until a Professor E. H. Wade

Pins it to Ophelia—and reprimands

The police, who, this but goes to show,

Have not the barest knowledge of Shakespeare,

Else would never have misread "lauds"

As "lands." A Detective Gregg Messing

Will answer, tersely, "Afraid

It's not our bailiwick. Missing

Persons, yes; missing poems, no."

(What's truly tragic's never allowed

To stand alone for long, of course.

At each moment there's a crowd

Of clowns pressing in: the booming ass

At every wake who, angling a loud

Necktie in the chip dip,

Airs his problems with intestinal gas,

Or the blow-dried bonehead out to sell

Siding to the grieving mother . . . . Well,

Wade sent the Leader another briefword:

"Decades of service to the Bard now force

Me to amend the girl's little slip.

'Chaunted' not 'chanted' is the preferred . . .")

Yet none of her unshakeable entourage

—Pedants, pundits, cops without a clue,

And a yearning young grease-monkey—are

Alerted yet. Still the empty car

Idles, idles on the cliff, and night

Isn't falling so much as day

Is floating out to sea . . . . Soon, whether

She's found or not, her lights will draw

Moths and tiny dark-winged things that might

Be dirt-clumps, ashes. Come what may,

The night will be lovely, as she foresaw,

The first stars easing through the blue,

Engine and ocean breathing together.