Smoke from his pipe
were spirits rising
from the dead;
they coiled into the air,
graceful tresses,
defused and dissipated.
He needed sunlight
for this sorcery;
his ghosts, silvery white
hung momentarily,
umbilical, heavenward;
he was at peace then.
To turn, on eyes opening,
find again that blank space beside you;
come downstairs,
witness to the still-birth of another day;
a receptacle of words, restless
to be heard but no ear to hear them;
to move, room to room,
through the obdurate indifference of objects;
remembering warmth in memories
that leave you to its shivering absence.
Sometimes I wish I was living in a crossroads town,
less than really, a bar, a grocery store, a water tower,
far away from any place of consequence. Here heat is a cube,
in summer; people are encased in it, flies in amber.
You walk outside to look at the day, then retreat inside again;
time is irrelevant; all day is heat, every hour the same
till night comes. Nothing of note has happened since the sixties:
a fire that gathered the population together for six hours,
smoked for a day or two, then went out;
that old shop’s still there like a rotten tooth.
There’s no traffic to speak of, the wires come in on high poles,
the line of them, askew in places; you see them into the distance;
there’s nothing on the landscape to obscure the view;
turn your head, ditto in the opposite direction.
When a wind gets up, it lifts the dust, everywhere’s covered;
the view through a window gives a grey tone to the landscape,
but that’s fine, dust is part of the appeal.
People are old; they grew old while they were still young;
it is their way of dealing with the heat and emptiness; their faces
are parched soil with bright eyes embedded, and they’re gentle.
Time has stopped in my town; there’s no one racing with it,
there’s no point; that’s the way I like it.
You stood at the side of the road,
snow-covered and, as yet, unmarked.
I watched you from the window:
at first, filling your eyes with its perfection,
then weighing printing your footsteps
against being the first to leave a blemish.
And before you had even turned,
I knew your decision.
What difference: the oblivion of a newly born child
and it dead beneath a city’s rubble?
And the child born on one side
of a fence and the other?
What difference: the grief of parents of fighters
and the grief of parents of children?
And the love of parents on one side
of a fence and the other?
What difference: the child who is voluble
and the child whose words are dead in the wreckage of its lungs?
And the longing to live on one side
of a fence and the other?
What difference: the bones that support a child
and those bones smashed to uselessness?
And the care needed on one side
of a fence and the other?
Concrete walls,
steel door.
Daylight is twilight,
though
way up, light
through a window
makes a play of leaves
on the wall opposite:
by this means,
we know that we are
underground,
buried.
Our living lives
are those leaves;
how we fear
the arrival of autumn
and autumn
is almost here.
He’s got a gimp;
it throws his suit
like the buttons are one button-hole out,
and the shirt falls
below his jacket
on that side.
He walks faster to blur it;
speeds through the city throngs;
that adeptness pleases him;
the gimp’s
in his talk
too.
He tells you straight;
tells you
he’s telling you straight,
to remember what he says
or get used to
being kicked around.
And always checking behind
or glancing into doorways
like he’s in debt
all down the street,
then turns a corner like he’s
trying to lose someone.
He keeps his right hand
in his jacket pocket;
the fingers are walking too;
I think it's because some woman told him
that constant movement
is freaky.
He won’t mind my
telling you;
he’ll enjoy been written about,
and feels he’d be good on tv;
he knows they wouldn’t have him;
their loss.
Betty,
the world is a marble;
getting smaller daily;
its mildews and viruses
have spread,
and they are at your feet.
I wanted to say something
reassuring,
for, at the very least, a child
should have hope
and till corrupted,
the child is beautiful;
but, what is there to say:
this has been destroyed.
Betty,
the world is a marble;
there is no stopping it;
its mildews and viruses
are spreading always
and they are at your feet.
.
Some poems refuse to be written, over and over. This is a rewrite of a poem that seems to have a hold on me
September Swallows
September swallows
Knots
on wires unbinding,
as though their true selves,
too long furled,
must hone their aeronautics.
They lift from the wires
into giddy flight,
like crochets escaping staves
for the grander arias of global skies.
Career, dip and wheel;
a restlessness in their DNA
compels them; tomorrow,
they’ll be arrows, Morocco-bound.
Behind those children playing,
I see a grandmother smiling;
she remembers
the blur of children’s play
but it’s not that memory,
it’s their place in her heart.
These moments of happiness:
she has seen them before,
knows the thin bone china
they’re made of;
her smiles are carefree
as the children
but are of this moment;
she has lived through many years.
How impressive the ladder looks from the bottom,
disappearing, as it does, into the clouds.
How those rungs invite;
how everyone encourages you to climb,
so you do.
And all the way up: yes, up, up, up
and, at the top, no more rungs:
space, just space;
they invited you to climb to a space.
Perhaps, I think, this may be Heaven;
maybe, set my molecules free
to wander through Heaven.
Perhaps, the thought is Heaven;
perhaps such a moment is eternity.
Like earthworms,
like the carcasses of all animals,
we darken the soil,
enrich it.
In their turn,
our children will rise,
live in the sun
till they, too, revert to humus.
Our gift to them,
to those coming ‒ grandchildren,
great grandchildren:
a poisoned, decaying earth
and, as a tree nourishes its fruit,
this earth must feed its children
all that has collected around roots,
all that is unseen in water.
You see it in his eyes.
He drowns it in incessant yap,
conceals it behind constant activity;
answers nothing,
but is forever asking questions,
filling his life with places and people;
always on vacation from himself.
His travels are to distraction.
Your hands, gentle,
resting in their usual place
on your lap,
listening to our conversation.
Fingers interwoven,
a basket for your thoughts,
the shape of caring,
the warm nest you made.
How wise those hands,
saying nothing
but alert in contemplation
and ready, always, to open.
