A COLLECTION OF EARLIER WORK

   Mandela

I was in darkness,

And you shone a light.

I was mute,

You lifted my chin,

And gave me a voice.

When I was quick and        

proud, you took me aside

And made me wise.

Knowing my anger,

You pulled me in,

Rolled up your sleeves

And showed me

The places

Where your hands had bled.

I lamented my failures,

And you wept with me,

Saying the names aloud.

I complained,

And you read me

The story of your suffering,

Raised like rope along 

The length of your arm.

When I caged you,

 You held up a fist,

 And when finally freed,

 You put your hands

 On me gently

 And gave me your blessing.

               Farewell, father.

               Farewell, friend.

               I am here,

               However unsteady the beat of my heart.

Approaching The Bridge

        I’m approaching the bridge

        Where he fell to his death,

        Seeing him again,

        As I slow,

        Climbing,

        Hand

        Over

        Hand,

        To the top rail,

        Steadying himself,

        Untethered from everything

        Except this one thing so perfectly clear.

        Another Icarus extinguished –

         No wax,

            No feathers,

            Not even a thin lumen of hope.

            Just the damp of despair

            Heavy enough

            To splay him out

            Like an empty sack

            On the jagged chaos of rock

            And the kaddish of flowing water.

     Drugs,

     We say,

     Their bloodless fingers wound round

     The slender stem of a child.

            We always say that now,

            Drugs,

            As if saying it

            Explains it,

            Disentangling

            The alien hexagons

            Insinuated with his own,

            And offering us

            The gift of blindness

            As we walk among the demons

            Devouring the world.

Aging Gracefully

My knee broods,

Primed for the slightest misstep,

And if I work

The spade at the crabgrass

Just so,

The muscles in my right side

Burst into flames (not

to mention

that pissy disk

glowering like a warlord

at L3.

The elastic in my lungs,

Along with

Most of my cartilage,

Gone,

Siphoned off

By the same thief

Who pilfered half my nouns.

Every pump

Valve

And vesicle

Slouches towards its own demise,

Each sabotaged

By a coterie of pretentious enzymes

Who have grabbed the wheel,

Determined to drive the

Whole kit and caboodle

Into the ditch. 

A Box Unfinished

My brother’s coffin is

An unfinished pine box.

Thin waves of grain roll

In graceful curves

Against white, summer wood,

Season lapping against season.

Inside,

All the commotion of his life –

From his first steps,

To the familiar face of falling,

From the unripened regard

Of family,

To the sweet nectar

Of a love come late,

From saving the world,

To being crushed by it –

Year lapping against year.

I can’t imagine him not moving,

Abandoned.

I can’t imagine him

Contained in a space,

Defined by inches.

Eighty four

By twenty eight

By twenty three.

I am oppressed by the gravity

Of grieving,

As if the mass lingering there,

At the close of his life,

Could be measured in light years.

A week passes.

Then two,

And, even as distance

Thins my melancholy,

The box remains:

A pale presence

Irradiating my mind’s eye.

For the life of me,

I can’t remember

What filled that space

Before,

And I fear

Whatever may settle

There

When it dims

And,

One day,

Disappears.

Let Us Rejoice

We can rejoice now

That women can serve in combat

Alongside men.

Rejoice,

Especially for the children,

Who can now lie awake throughout

Their long darkness,

Swaddled by cliché,

Wondering

Who they’ll bury first.

Rejoice

That these children

Can now dedicate

A dresser top

To flags

Slipped seamlessly from

The remains

Of a father or an older brother,

A sister or a mother –

Flags snapped into tight bundles

By soldiers smartly dressed,

Who themselves look past

These sad iterations  

Of small, dark faces

Towards the faces

Of their own children

As yet undimmed.

And if you look

Long enough at these bereft children,

Closely enough,

And if you truly want to see,

The stigmata will eventually appear

On the delicate flesh

Of their diminished lives,

Like on the soft hands

And bound feet of Jesus,

Also crucified for our sins.

Beautiful Toy

I bought a toy for Blu,

A shiny red tractor

With a flatbed trailer,

Hauling an eight inch yellow backhoe.

It was used,

And like the ad said,

In Very Good Condition.

It arrived Fed Ex,

Carelessly packaged in a box

The size of a coffee table.

Opening it,

I felt the queasiness I experience

When coming upon an accident,

With vehicles

Upended or eviscerated

Like great bleeding beasts,

Bits and pieces of their lives

Strewn about.

But in the box,

Nothing was broken

And everything was there.

Still,

I wondered about the people.

What rage,

What indifference,

Or terrible grief

Would make someone do such a thing,

So casually consign

Such a beautiful toy?

What boy

Would willingly surrender it?

Also in the box

Was a gray, woolen mitten.

Just one,

The left one.

Not in his room,

Not in the jumble

Of hats, coats,

And the twenty three other mittens

In the lost and found at school,

And not stuck by some static devilry

To the nylon lining of his jacket.

He had to look,

And look.

But it had vanished like a sock.

How many times

Had they told him

Not to lose his mittens

Falling Away From Eve

I was always

On my way out of town back then,

Orbiting the lives that other people lived,

Repelled,

Rather than drawn in,

By their gravity.

I stopped for coffee on tenth,

Just before the on ramp northbound.

The barista was from Cambodia.

She was the color of cocoa,

With thick, black hair

Pulled to a lithe tail by a

Tie shaped like a dragon.

A tattoo,

A vine of some kind,

All deep reds and greens,

Flowed down her brown neck,

Twining its way

Over the soft slope of her shoulder,

Across her back,

Vanishing just over

The promontory

Of her shoulder blade

And reemerging on the side of her thigh.

After encircling her calf,

This almost living thing

Rooted itself around the smooth skin

And bone of her ankle.

She was Eve,

The second primordial promise,

Before the invention of remorse.

I watched her,

Lingering over refills,

Talking with her as I could,

Watched her move,

Watched her with every breath

While the afternoon drifted by.

When I rose to leave,

She caught my eye.

I get off at six,

She said.

But this isn’t about that anymore.

Her daughter greeted us at the door

And I had to pull

Myself free of her stare,

Her green eyes

Far too hot for mine,

Unaccustomed to anything but flight.

Her name was Jade.

At bedtime,

In pink PJs from neck to toe,

And clutching a plush lamb,

She came up to me,

Close,

Against my knees.

Her eyes, this time,

Permitted no escape.

Are you going to hurt my mommy?

She asked.

I tried not to look away,

Tried not to think about

The many ways such things happened,

The momentum of unintended consequences.

No, I said.

After a brief scan of my face,

And satisfied with her calculations,

Or so I thought,

She kissed her mother

And padded off down the hall.

Waking early,

I nearly tripped over Jade and her lamb

Curled up

Just outside the bedroom door.

I lifted her gently

(I can still feel

The warmth of her weight

On my arms)

And settled her in bed

Next to her mother.

Our eyes met

Just long enough

For the expectations to evaporate.

Looking back on it now,

I suspect that neither of us

Had learned,

Or could locate,

The right verb for a moment like this.

Since then,

I have constructed

An almost palpable memory of Eve.

But all that is left of Jade

Is here.

There are,

After all,

No obligations in the garden.

No love,

Because there is no loss.

No memory,

Because there is only now.

And nothing is necessary.

All of that,

Fortunately or not,

Comes later.

Sherman Alexie Says

Sherman Alexie says

How healthy you are is

Directly proportional

To the distance you put between

You and your reservation.

So how sick you are

Is inversely proportional

To that same distance,

And who you become

Once you’ve left is

Conversely proportional

To who you were supposed to be

When you were there.

This is the reason

Why so many of us

Do not stay,

But must leave,

And leave,

Until we stumble over names,

Forget faces,

And can’t even recall

Where we came from in the first place.

If Sherman Alexie

Is right about this,

Then who we are is

Directly, inversely, and conversely proportional

To who we are,

And,

Before your head explodes,

Think about this:

People,

Unlike grapes,

Can choose not to become raisins; 

Nor must they,

Like an oily rag,

Burst into flames.

    Listening To Corvids On A Spring Morning

A murder of crows

A clamor of crows

A clash

A mash

A marauder of crows,

Descending

En mass

Through the scrittle and scree

Of the magpies’ endeavors

In the bare willow tree.

What a ruckus ensues!

All kinds of abuse,

Obscenities not even sailor would use!

All this scuffling of branch

And flutterance of wing

Is their discordant dance

To the coming of spring,

To the freshening earth,

The woodlot’s rebirth,

And the long shadows of evening

That summer will bring.

Gone is the darkness,

The somnolent snows,

And gone is the freedom

To languish and doze.

Its time to set goals,

For body and soul:

Soil to condition and

Pipes to position,

There’s hens and there’s chicks,

Nannies and kids,

The pen for the pigs,

And fences to fix.

All waiting for me.

Reveille!

Reveille!

Rise to the sound 

Of the caw and the glackle!

The cacophonous clackle

Of magpies and crows.

Love In The Absence Of Algebra

I have known her

For thirty four years,

And everything that I know

Keeps us strangers.

When we speak,

It is not to one another,

But to projections

Warped by the lens of habit.

It isn’t the geometry that concerns me.

I know where she is.

What I don’t know is

Who or

What she is.

I am confounded

By the algebra,

As I was 

When I was young.

Staring at the page,

Throwing numbers

At either

Or both sides

Of an equal sign

Afforded me no more success then,

Than the paralysis of despair

Or my eruptions

Of compressed rage do now.

However much

I mine the memory

Of my childhood

For a deposit of value,

Or sift through

An eternity of schooling

For an order of operations

To cure

The ills of such an intimacy,

I come up with nothing.

Nor was there anything

All those years ago when

I hunted in vain for the magic

Required to solve for X,

Muddling then,

As now,

To become a better person.

The shadow cast

By that early failure

Sits beside me

As I write these words.

Young people tell me

They can’t imagine

When they will

Ever use algebra.

What they don’t understand

Is that there will be

Times in the world

When everything that matters

Depends on it.

The Spaces Between Verbs

When my father died,

He took the war with him.

He took the smile

Of a young man in uniform,

Finally out from under

The shadow of his family,

And he took every memory of Paris

After the Ardennes.

He took Dixieland Jazz

And Maria Callas,

Red Skelton and McHale’s Navy,

Hard candy,

And his 58 Mercury station wagon.

He took his mother and father,

My grandparents

And the scent of the old world

Trapped in trunks

Abandoned in the basement.

When my father died,

He took his wife,

My mother,

And the secrets that pass

Between a young bride

And her groom.

He took the Seattle Rainiers,

Sicks Stadium,

And Sam Heller,

A First Avenue haberdasher

Who sold uniforms to the team.

He took big cigars,

And his brown bowling bag

With his blue ball and shoes.

He took Paul,

Who cut his hair,

And Curly,

Who cut mine.

He took places with names

Like Klamath Falls,

Scappoose,

And Slippery Rock,

Places

Where he would sell

Army surplus or men’s wear

From big suitcases

Lugged in and out

Of the Mercury.

He took the Poodle Dog,

Chase’s House Of Pancakes,

Chicken fried steak,

Eggs over easy

With bacon and white toast

Seasoned with garlic

From a little shaker

Retrieved from the inside pocket

Of his coat

When it was just him and me.

When my father died,

He took his side of the story,

An entire cosmology,

Gone, now, for over forty years,

Leaving only

Names and faces

From his life

Drifting like constellations

Across the dark skies

Of my solitude.

Until The Wind Overwhelms Me At Last

There’s a sorrowful note

In the song of the wind,

In the song of the wind tonight.

Just the faintest stir

To test the resolve

Of the yellowed leaves to take flight.

The glorious greening

Has come and gone,

The wheel of the seasons has turned.

There’s a diminishing light,

And a chill to the night,

Which the goose

Has so rightly discerned.

The eagle and blackbird,

The squirrel and bear

Have all marked the change in the breeze,

But the leaves still cling

To the Linden branch

Flaunting the rule for deciduous trees.

And as I look back

On the seasons of life,

Like those leaves, I, too, cling to the past.

I refuse to let go,

In spite of all that I know,

Until the wind overwhelms me at last.