After Hours at the W. H. Over Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota, with Paula Kinoshita, Canadian
I
We found nothing wanting discovery
except the vagrant F of BUF ALO.
Paula petted anything woebegone—
birds I’m not sure were native Dakotans
when taxidermed by invisible hands.
I stood watch, though no one was left but us,
our fellow marauders deserting us or
these premises when the merlot ran dry.
Everything spread out ad infinitum,
without apparent order, mimetic
given Over’s natural history
plot, yet discernible aisles sprang forward
like corn rows as we picked through displays,
idling twice to ogle beadwork fringes
of a baby’s moccasins, Paula cooing
at their intricacies, complimenting
the maker out loud as if we were at home
appraising her wares, or at the world’s bazaar,
convinced our public appreciation
would only heighten beadwork’s stock value
once we’d claimed some as ours. But we ignored
the moosehead overhead because hung right
side up, reminding me of the big screen
in sports bars, stay-tuned for a long-faced,
long-nosed Presidential address, and because
I’d never seen one in South Dakota
or anywhere near. Had Paula ever
in her Canada province? I asked. No.
We did agree its size was impressive.
Imagine how huge its body had been.
Solemnity bred by high, flat ceilings,
modeled on the archless dome of the plains,
no doubt, and the fluorescent lights made us
mistake a bear rug for a buffalo
robe, or was it the other way around?
II
Across from a mammoth teepee we found
the sole claim shanty allegedly built
by Gabriel Mydland, a Norwegian
shipbuilder, for his six children and wife.
A Dakota: Land & People exhibit,
it had a dormer roof, without dormer,
a screen door, one window, and no garage.
Habitable yet barely hospitable,
I think. Within the lintel figurehead’s
crewelwork, Paula finds and reads aloud:
A tribute to all the immigrants who
endured the hardships and uncertainties
of the Dakota Prairies during
the homestead boom of the 1880s.
I searched for asides on the evolution
of wall board and floor joists from sod 2 x 4s
to Sears lumber culled from black forests
then distributed via paper-saving
electronic catalogs and Roadway
to the nearly tree-free, landlocked prairie.
But the sign we find says loudly in caps:
BETTER HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR OWN COMPANY.
Sage heads up, we concur, peering into
the poet-waxed confines, reminiscent
of a corporate cubicle except
tinier—where a big dog couldn’t turn
around to find its tail in a twister—
and sans gewgaws or one labor-saving
device, say a garbage disposal or
Kleenex, an out-of-the-way clothesline or
the Frigidaire’s magnetic calendar,
bought with nickels at the Franklin dime store
when I was ten and Paula was just born.
III
Wondering how eight people loved each other
kinked alongside Dakota’s wind, I think
of Thoreau’s retreat, a divining rod
for reflection or duplicity—both
the authentic cabin, visible in
spirit only, and its discernible
facsimile, far from Walden Pond’s depths.
Reciting synchronicity after
Thoreau, I once stopped by on July 4th—
at least ad locum historians believe
to be the site Thoreau situated
his home founded on inner resources
and Emerson’s wife’s magnanimity,
surely, since Ralph and Henry befriended
each other, and Mrs. Emerson died
yet continued supporting her husband’s
ministries with an admirable trust
fund. Words taken as history, themselves
constitutive, I know. Concord’s tour guide
told me Thoreau as Thoreau pronounced it
rhymes with furrow, complete with feminine
end note, to further diminish its French
inflection, she said, as Thoreau was through-
and-through Concordian-American.
I like to think of him still in snowshoes,
standing on frozen Walden, sounding it
out. I like to think of Concord’s guide in
a parka at her roadside hut, waving
passersby on, after setting them straight.
I like to think of me within the chain-link
parameters of what was once Thoreau’s
10 x 15 inviolate shadowbox,
cajoling providence to co-sign my book.
IV
The woman appeared as if from nowhere.
We were just looking and passing time, we said,
then grinned without guile or self-consciousness
before she could ask, Is this your hand bag?
She raised a silk purse. I would have claimed it
had it been a Kenneth Cole or faux Gucci.
Whose wallet would I have spoken for?
I think of all the headless mannequins
modeling prairie women’s shawls. Perhaps
it’s hers, I say, pointing out the woman
clothed au naturel, without shame, silver
tinsel draping her neck like a boa
or a noose, given the display’s Wild West
Christmas theme. Women weren’t hanged, the woman
who announces herself as assistant
to the assistant curator claims. There’s that
at least, I think. How can she be so sure,
Paula wanted to know, if you weren’t there?
The assistant to the assistant
curator conceded, ushering us
to the door as she spoke, Everything
happens once. Flagrante delicto, we
misplace Gameboy slugs or wood dollies in
a turnstile on the way out. We agree,
Everything happens once. Because, we think,
ad hoc grace, transient as wind so familiar
it appears close to divisible, then
so ever present, transparent, once more.