reassembles parts.
Seeming to end,
everything starts.
To prostrate the body
despite upright ideas
exudes the sureness
observers envy, watching
you ascend alone as if
to an appointment to which
they’re never invited,
although you go so early
out of knowledge,
out of mercy.
Leisure
There’s no man to see, no dog about which.
Too easy to accuse the innocent, forget
to wake up, attend to aches. I worked for this,
imagined, saved, emptied rooms for what
was clearly sacred; those I asked to get lost
got lost. Now all surfaces are clean,
lists go straight to essentials, the ghost
existence that underlay the quotidian
floats to the top – so what are these lines
on the page, those calls from outside
that grate, their edge demonic, feline?
Something unfinished draws my eye
to the door. If there were a knock,
I’d be making a choice, though common,
to burrow, interior, or stand and talk,
the business self I used to summon
and command. It would be a local candidate,
salesperson, church – no Trojan horse –
but even if I fled in outsize agitation,
the flight would be deliberate, exerting force.
Complaint
Does the pain manifest in neck, hip, shoulders, head?
Would you call it chronic, or do you suffer isolated
spasms of distress, such as a damsel might express upon
tiedness to tracks, till she’s stretched, slashed, or undone
the ropes? Does trivia dog you, such as whether the word
“ambivalent” has one stressed syllable or two, as heard
in the solar plexus? Are you depressed or just too able
to apprehend the daily mess: eighty-five people
killed by guns, eighteen hundred women raped,
five thousand dogs put down (this just in the States)?
Confess who you are, attuned to the killer in painkiller,
incapable of rest or pleasure while any suffer.
Knowledge presses on your ears, teeth, stomach, chest,
yet you keep pursuing more, as if it gave you breath.
Insomnia
As if peace and repair were debts
to be repaid promptly, it treats rest
as a privilege, night an offense
to purpose. Even in the absence
of regret, worry at normal levels,
its demons dance. I know the cycle:
best not to marshal the forces
that worked all day, but like horses
they read my mind. Before I decide,
they leave the gate, which is why
I find universities suspect.
At work I’m their advocate
and face, pushing construction
of argument, decontamination
of speech; some call me Doctor
by mistake. Meanwhile I keep after
house dust, hope, a good night’s sleep.
Clouds swell; engines rev. Perhaps TV
could burn them out, or a week
out of town, if citizens could leave
the metropolis of thought, cursed,
necessary state. Night could be worse
by so much: that this is gratuitous
makes it extravagantly restless,
the agenda item that always gets me,
resisting the only tool that lets me
pick it up, buzzing as if electric
when its absence is requested.
To Stay in Place
Clean; rearrange; repaint; improve.
It’s time, once again, not to move.
Closets shall continue to be few,
so have no mercy, culling shoes.
As the office shall remain an alcove
with imagined door and shelves,
books must be pared to the obscure
and essential. Question all furniture:
when was every chair last sat in?
The kitchen will never be eat-in,
but storage has yet to be maximized:
let hooks and racks assert new life.
Bedrooms still refuse expansion,
but who can sleep in a mansion
whose soaring ceilings would devour
the warm enclosure of the hours
by which all are rejuvenated?
Trading up is overrated:
what you can invent while settled
tests a different kind of mettle.
It’s not a minor illness, but nor is it major:
not much to do but slow down, wait,
and let the present, day by day, turn into future.
Looking forward, not just ahead, to feeling better,
the back of my mind has finally shut the gate.
It’s not a minor illness, but nor is it major.
Not to rest is not an option, says the doctor.
Her face adds: even after this abates.
Let the present be today and not the future:
extrapolate nothing; sleep; savor pleasure
rather than killing it for being scarce or late.
It’s not a minor illness (nor is it major),
but your ailments double if you would sooner
interrogate joy than free it to invade
and turn the present, come what may, into a future.
Will I remember this when I’m recovered
or wipe the trace tranquility away?
It’s not a minor illness, but nor is it major.
Today it brought a present, turning off the future.
Affliction
The offense may be small:
an excess of sugar,
lines at the theater,
or traffic, thus late arrival.
No explanation, no appeal.
Someone will pay in regret:
friend, true love, service rep.
Failure burns. It’s personal.
We see the same in nations:
enraged by filth of peasants,
foreign accent, animal stench,
tyrants brood in mansions,
finding new forms for power.
But most men lack influence,
subjecting only assistants,
children, intimates, to minor
attacks, with words or silence.
Smart ones never strike.
Cast out, they’d have to fight
affliction alone, its violence
turned inward. When remorse
at last replaces animus,
who will be there, hands
on hips, awaiting the newest
round of talks? The self
being cruelest, the ritual
will hit the stony wall
of breakdown, and what else?
Its rage needs a target
that crumples but always
gets back up, practically
hired for it. Now where was it?
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Even Gettysburg, which still matters,
isn’t that close, so when Hurricane Sandy
set its sights squarely on Cumberland County,
it was notable, briefly, to live in the county.
After the stocking-up and bathtub-filling,
we slept away from windows, which held.
Animals hid from pressure, rain, and wind,
but trees and poles withstood the wind,
which gave the usual inconsequential
beating: clogged gutters, canceled meetings,
a boon for grocers, Home Depot, Target,
the chance to claim we’d been a target –
the modest things we’d bargained for
when we came from coasts and cities
or down the street, and bought our houses,
many a century old, the kind of houses
bathrooms and closets were carved from
later, for our plenitude. A traveler
buying lunch or switching highways
might remark, “There, off the highway,
in that quaint little house, somebody’s
whole life is passing,” then as quickly
lose the moment’s vision of the town
in a swath of country, town, country, town.
Practice
J’ai seize ans, we said all year.
We had longer, more interesting phrases, but that’s the one that takes me there.
J’ai seize ans, we said all year.
We mulled over college brochures, dismissed the local boys, and trained our ears
for distant speech, but there we remained, in geographical despair.
We planned to seize the future when it came. We’d know it anywhere.
J’ai seize ans, we said all year.
Bathtime
First answer, always: no to getting in.
Then no to getting out. Once we’re in,
our mother has to stay, even if she
hurries everything, tries to read,
or sits on the rug with that look
of being gone. But she won’t pick
up the phone and has no computer.
Our favorite time. So why fight her?
Baths always seem to come when
something is starting, the moment
we’re revving up to stay dry. We’re busy.
Bathing isn’t life but what constantly
gets in the way, like trying on clothes.
We’d battle harder if we didn’t know
the ending: the grownup always wins.
And no matter how much she complains
of exhaustion, she’s always happier later
despite still being dirty herself. The water
rises fast, then takes a long time to drain.
It’ll be up to us one day, she says again,
when she’s old or ruined or dead,
so for now could we please respect
her living wish and wash,
because the world is mostly flesh
(whatever that means: don’t try
to picture it) and gone by the time
you’re clothed and playing again?
It’s mystery enough, we give in.
The Frost Place
Franconia, New Hampshire
The poets drank and declaimed outside
while I stayed in, tied to my body,
recalling, with minimal bitterness,
high school, its odd kisses, missing the party.
At least I had Frost, or the idea of Frost,
to talk to in the dark. And I’d bought
good maternity clothes, culled from racks
so flower-drenched, so vague, I thought
the anxiety, almost rage, of not being me
could harm the baby. But now it was late,
I couldn’t be seen, and my mind
clattered and swarmed. What would I make
to eat that week, in Frost’s kitchen?
Why hadn’t I gone to Europe sooner,
worn hats, kept a place in New York?
Frost’s children had eaten one-dish dinners
of boiled potatoes, and not from poverty.
Simplify, I said aloud, or you’ll never be
consequential. Laughter from the yard.
I’d heard the joke before, semi-literary.
Out the window, stars caught in screens.
A single road lay ahead, open wide.
All I had to do was shoulder supplies.
All I had to do was provide.
To a Limited Extent
it’s not about how far you fall
but how: you could break a leg
by missing what you’d barely call
a height, like the bottom step,
your mind on another planet,
your body dully at home, moving
laundry or a chair. The damage
may be minor, but it quietly ruins
your plans. Never again, you say,
shall I carry laundry or a chair.
For a time you don’t, until the day
you have to strive again, to scale
the hill or wall that is the ground,
though still you’d prefer not to lead
this march. (Others have renounced
much more. Everyone needs
to be inert sometimes; could you sit out
further rounds?) Being too strong
enables hope to entwine with doubt
so that both can prove you wrong:
where others would have given in
to joy’s unreasonable limits,
you who were always too disciplined
at managing life, managed to miss it.
Into a Rock
After the injury, the teacher instructs:
Come to yoga anyway.
If anything hurts, go into a rock.
Become the ultimate burrower.
Let all be refusal,
not just the center.
The origin of strength
is the will to submit
to requirements of pain,
to curl into limits, imitate
a fossilized animal
immortalized by decay,
dismiss hope of completion,
embrace the body’s
response to ambition,
and overthrow the intellect,
which paralyzed
the columns that, cat by cat,
swan by swan, rock by rock,
you seek to reclaim.
Don’t even tell it you’ve stopped.
On Writing
A love poem risks becoming a ruin,
public, irretrievable, a form of tattooing,
while loss, being permanent,
can sustain a thousand documents.
Loss predominates in history,
smorgasbord of death, betrayal, heresy,
crime, contagion, deployment, divorce.
A writer could remain aboard
the ship of grief and thrive, never
approaching the shores of rapture.
What can be said about elation
that the elated, seeking consolation
from their joy, will go to books for?
It’s wiser and quicker to look for
a poem in the dentist’s chair
than in the luxury suite where
eternal love, declared, turns out
to be eternal. Who cares about
a stranger’s bliss? Thus the juncture
where I’m stalled, unaccustomed
to integrity, despite your presence,
our tranquility, and every confidence.
III
his heart is an educated swamp,
and he is mindful of his garden,
which prepares to die.
– Stanley Kunitz
Weeding
Uproot them from our nation!
The decisive twist and give
augur transformation:
ragged to tended, anarchic
to formed, almost ruined
to almost beautiful. Wilted piles
molder in bags, destined
for rebirth as matter less reviled,
mulch or dirt to send up fruit.
Less than human, less than plant,
they mustn’t reproduce.
Hacked, choked, smothered by hand,
they die for what they represent:
speed, persistence, fecundity.
Anything so successful and abundant
can weather the adversity.
Backyard
I wish I would garden,
wish
I had the ambition
to visit my quarter acre
daily, planning nature,
to expand this home
by creating that room,
to cherish not resent
the plot that represents
potential. On the rare
greenhouse visit, I make sure
to inquire: what flowers
can a working single mother
with allergies, back trouble,
and a dog plant in a jungle?
(Sunlight’s scarce, too.)
Absurd to ask for blooms,
but my daughters cherish
cut flowers, at which
my immigrant nature rebels:
with land at your disposal,
you undermine the strivings
of generations by buying
what is doomed and can’t be eaten.
Is there anything with petals, even
ugly or small, strong enough
to compete in unmulched
beds, those evil plantains
spreading while the humans
read novels or roast a chicken?
I don’t expect a true solution.
The answer is not in a nursery.
The answer inhabits the psyche
of the customer who yearns
for nature to have discipline
on someone else’s terms,
the consumer who dreams
of unbreakable plates that put
themselves away, pets
that brush their own coats,
children who needn’t be told.
That’s the would-be gardener
who pays two hundred dollars
for a carful of plants she will kill
all season, day by hot day, until
the lot becomes wild again
and winter returns to even
the fields, shielding every corner
with the same white comforter.
On Being Criticized for Coming from Suburbia
You did not ride your yellow bicycle
a thousand times past the hot-pink azaleas
your father was mulching with pine straw
while your mother set the rice cooker out
in the carport, where it spat hot cooking water,
the lid bobbing in white foam,
initiating evening.
You never walked out the modest French doors
into the brick-walled patio with wrought-iron gates
where you swept leaves in fall, hung clothes in summer.
You didn’t dawdle on the backyard swingset
and stare into a sky as infinite as the one above Manhattan