Matthews' "Moving Again"

Divorce forces changes, often changes of residence. It also forces changes internally and the outlook someone once had is also affected. Nothing, in effect, stays the same. But memory keeps the past alive and with it, regret. William Matthews’ poem Moving Again brings all of these changes and their permanent residence in our memory together.

                        At night the mountains look like huge

                        dim hens. In a few geological eras

                        new mountains may

                        shatter the earth’s shell

                        and poke up like stone wings.

                        Each part must serve for a whole.

                        I bring my sons to the base

                        of the foothills and we go up.

                        From a scruff of ponderosa

                        pines we startle gaudy swerves

                        of magpies that settle in our rising

                        wake. Then there’s a blooming

                        prickly pear. “Jesus, Dad, what’s that?”

                        Willy asks. It’s like a yellow tulip

                        grafted to a cactus: it’s a beautiful

                        wound the cactus puts out

                        to bear fruit and be healed.

                        If I lived with my sons

                        all year I’d be less sentimental

                        about them. We go up

                        to the mesa top and look down

                        at our new hometown. The thin air

                        warps in the melting light

                        like the aura before a migraine.

                        The boys are tired. A tiny magpie

                        fluffs into a pine far below

                        and farther down the valley

                        of child support and lights

                        people are opening drawers.

                        One of them finds a yellowing

                        patch of newsprint with a phone

                        number penciled on it

                        from Illinois, from before they moved, before

                        Nicky was born. Memory

                        is our root system. “Verna,” he says to himself

                        because his wife’s in another room,

                        “whose number do you suppose this is?”

The poem begins in the present with the poet looking at the external scenery and contemplating what may occur in another era after he is gone. What he is seeing may be shattered and changed, new mountains taking the place of the ones he is looking at. In a manner, we are already coming upon some foreshadowing of what we will find out has happened. Each part of the land must serve a purpose as part of the whole, he says.

            He then moves on to the active hiking up of the mountain with his sons, one of whom still carries the awe of a little child after seeing magpies swerving after being disturbed. “Jesus, Dad, what’s that?” he asks, excitedly. Matthews then answers indirectly, that the blooming prickly pear is “like a yellow tulip/grafted to a cactus: a beautiful/the cactus puts out/to bear fruit and be healed.” We then find out the reason for this sentimentality, which is that he does not live with his sons all year, that there has been a divorce and that his children spend part of the year with their mother. But because he now has time with them he indulges in the sentimentality, which is partly necessary and partly natural. “If I lived with my sons/all year I’d be less sentimental/about them.”

            They continue their hike to the top of the mesa “and look down/at our new hometown[,]” hence the title. But it is not his sons’ new hometown, really, it is his only, since he does not live with his sons all year round, as he told us some lines before. Up at the top of the mesa the thin air changes and his comparison is excellent, it “warps in the melting light/like the aura before a migraine.” It is as if the change in the air is mentally affecting him and in a way it does, for it brings on a memory, an unpleasant one at that, thus alluding to the onset of a migraine is suitable.  His sons are tired and again he sees a magpie as it flies down into a pine that’s far below, but the poet moves further, imagining life “down in the valley/of child support and lights” and again alludes to divorce. He takes us to the interior of the mind as well as of place. The unpleasant memory finds the port back in his former house in Illinois as he opens a drawer in his bedroom and “finds a yellowing/patch of newsprint with a phone/number” written on it. This was before the move, he tells us. Someone cheated on somebody and this cannot be forgotten, thus the line “Memory is our root system.” Memory keeps us rooted to ourselves and to our origins, to where we were born, where we were raised (if it’s same place we were raised); but it also keeps the regrets alive, the guilt we feel that we cannot escape no matter how many times we move.

            The picture he paints at the end is devastating, that of him finding the phone number, which he is surprised to find. It is a bit unclear if it is a phone number his wife has hidden or the poet himself. He calls his wife’s name, but only to himself, because she is in another room, and asks whose number it is. Was it a number he should have thrown away? Was it a number she hid? No matter, as it was a reason, if not the reason, for the change in location.