so there won’t be such a draft
on my shoulders—
I will get back to work
on my long metrical poem,
the one I will recite to the cheering throng
prior to your impending beheading.
Writing in the Afterlife
I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulfurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.
Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.
I knew I would not always be a child
with a model train and a model tunnel,
and I knew I would not live forever,
jumping all day through the hoop of myself.
I had heard about the journey to the other side
and the clink of the final coin
in the leather purse of the man holding the oar,
but how could anyone have guessed
that as soon as we arrived
we would be asked to describe this place
and to include as much detail as possible—
not just the water, he insists,
rather the oily, fathomless, rat-happy water,
not simply the shackles, but the rusty,
iron, ankle-shredding shackles—
and that our next assignment would be
to jot down, off the tops of our heads,
our thoughts and feelings about being dead,
not really an assignment,
the man rotating the oar keeps telling us—
think of it more as an exercise, he groans,
think of writing as a process,
a never-ending, infernal process,
and now the boats have become jammed together,
bow against stern, stern locked to bow,
and not a thing is moving, only our diligent pens.
The Parade
How exhilarating it was to march
along the great boulevards
in the sunflash of trumpets
and under all the waving flags—
the flag of desire, the flag of ambition.
So many of us streaming along—
all of humanity, really—
moving in perfect sync,
yet each lost in the room of a private dream.
How stimulating the scenery of the world,
the rows of roadside trees,
the huge blue sheet of the sky.
How endless it seemed until we veered
off the broad turnpike
into a pasture of high grass,
heading toward the dizzying cliffs of mortality.
Generation after generation,
we shoulder forward
under the play of clouds
until we high-step off the sharp lip into space.
So I should not have to remind you
that little time is given here
to rest on a wayside bench,
to stop and bend to the wildflowers,
or to study a bird on a branch—
not when the young
keep shoving from behind,
not when the old are tugging us forward,
pulling on our arms with all their feeble strength.
The Only Day in Existence
The morning sun is so pale
I could be looking at a ghost
in the shape of a window,
a tall, rectangular spirit
peering down at me now in my bed,
about to demand that I avenge
the murder of my father.
But this light is only the first line
in the five-act play of this day—
the only day in existence—
or the opening chord of its long song,
or think of what is permeating
these thin bedroom curtains
as the beginning of a lecture
I must listen to until dark,
a curious student in a V-neck sweater,
angled into the wooden chair of his life,
ready with notebook and a chewed-up pencil,
quiet as a goldfish in winter,
serious as a compass at sea,
eager to absorb whatever lesson
this damp, overcast Tuesday
has to teach me,
here in the spacious classroom of the world
with its long walls of glass,
its heavy, low-hung ceiling.
No Time
In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side under a smooth slab of granite.
Then, all day long, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.
Balsa
A few days ago
when leaves were rushing by the windows,
I took this feeling
I have toward the world,
this mix of love and fear,
and carved a scale model of it
out of a block of balsa wood,
something you can find at any reputable hobby shop.
I used a set of knives
that would be very alarming horrifying shocking dreadful
in the hands of the wrong person,
especially if he had you strapped to a chair,
but in my hands, under a lamp,
they allowed me to express exactly
the way I feel toward people and things.
I did not smoke a cigarette while I worked
or sip a glass of ginger ale with ice,
as another might.
I just worked,
shaving away, like Michelangelo,
all the wood that was not my lust and apprehension.
When I had finished,
when I had gone as far as the knives
would allow me to go,
I placed my attitude toward the world
on a lace tablecloth,
a thing so light, so delicate and airy
I could think of nothing to do
but sit down in a chair and feel like
the happiest shell on the beach,
the happiest hobbyist in town.
Tomorrow I will get busy working
on another scale model,
this time of my childhood,
which I will fashion also from balsa,
being careful to keep the blades
from flying out of control
as they slice away at the soft cube of wood,
being careful not to draw any blood.
Then on Sunday, I will go to the park,
carrying the fragile thing under my arm,
and set it on the smooth surface of the oval pond.
And while the boys are sailing their boats,
running along the water’s edge with their long sticks,
oblivious to the cries of their guardians,
I will stand off to the side
and watch my childhood—
that small vessel of wonder and cruelty—
being blown away by sudden unexpected gusts.
Elk River Falls
is where the Elk River falls
from a rocky and considerable height,
turning pale with trepidation at the lip
(it seemed from where I stood below)
before it is unbuckled from itself
and plummets, shredded, through the air
into the shadows of a frigid pool,
so calm around the edges, a place
for water to recover from the shock
of falling apart and coming back together
before it picks up its song again,
goes slid
ing around the massive rocks
and past some islands overgrown with weeds
then flattens out and slips around a bend
and continues on its winding course,
according to this camper’s guide,
then joins the Clearwater at its northern fork,
which must in time find the sea
where this and every other stream
mistakes the monster for itself,
sings its name one final time
then feels the sudden sting of salt.
Earth
The sun is so clear and torch-like
on this cool October morning,
all I am aware of is the sensation
of its steady heat on my upturned face.
I am not thinking of how late the train is
that I am here to meet,
here with nothing to read, not even
the morning paper or a story by O. Henry.
The unfiltered burn of the autumn sun
on my skin is all that I know,
that and a small bubble of curiosity
about whether you could re-create this feeling in hell
if you managed to position yourself
just the right distance from the roaring
bank of furnaces where the sounds
of shoveling and howling are coming from.
But no, the damned would always be jostling
and pushing us closer to some fiery maw,
and in heaven the light would be
too hallowed, too theatrical to warm our faces.
And there would be no place for the train station
or the little café across the street,
no place in hell for the sunny table,
the bitter coffee, and the woman walking her dog.
Only the glare—I am imagining
with my eyes closed behind my favorite sunglasses—
the glare, some low chanting,
and the milling of some vast, incorporeal gang.
Colorado
Is there any part of the devil’s body
that has not been used to name
some feature of the American topography,
I wondered when the guide directed
our attention to the rocky tip of a mesa
which was known as the Devil’s Elbow.
He was a college student
just trying to do his summer job
and besides, the cumulus clouds
were massing beautifully
above the high rock face,
so I was not about to say anything,
but from my limited encounters
with evil, it looked to me more
like the hammer in the devil’s inner ear.
Lying in Bed in the Dark,
I Silently Address the Birds of Arizona
Oh, birds of Arizona,
who woke me yesterday with your excited chirping,
where do you go to die?
So many of you, and yet never a trace
of your expirations,
no lump of feathers happened upon
here on the pavement
or another there on a square of lawn.
Are you down in the scrub turning in circles?
Do you tilt and fall on your side?
Do you lie there breathing among the warm rocks,
lie there breathing,
lie there
as the moon rises,
as the members of your flock fall silent for the night,
and the earth revolves around the center of your tiny eye?
Bodhidharma
This morning the surface of the wooded lake
is uncommonly smooth—absolute glass—
which must be the reason I am thinking
of Bodhidharma, the man who brought Buddhism
to China by crossing the water standing on a single reed.
What an absorbing story, especially
when you compare it to Zeus with his electric quiver
or Apollo who would just as soon
turn you into a willow tree as look at you sideways.
In every depiction, there is no mistaking
Bodhidharma, always up on his reed,
gliding toward the shores of China,
a large, fierce-looking man in a loincloth
delicately balanced on a little strip of bamboo,
a mere brushstroke on a painted scroll,
tiny surfboard bearing the lessons of the Buddha.
I recognized him one night in a Chinese restaurant
after the disappointment
of the fortune cookie, the dry orange, and the tepid tea.
He was hanging on a wall behind the cash register,
and when I quizzed the young cashier,
she looked back at the painting and said
she didn’t know who it was but it looked like her boss.
Thinking of her and Bodhidharma
makes me want to do many things,
but mostly take off my shoes and socks
and slide over a surface of water on a fragile reed
No message would be burning in my satchel,
but I might think of one on the way.
If not, I would announce to the millions
that it is foolish to invest too heavily
in the present moment,
not when we have the benefit of the past
with its great pillowed rooms of memory,
let alone the future,
that city of pyramids and spires,
and ten thousand bridges
suspended by webs of glistening wire.
Rain
It was raining all day in Kathmandu,
first a mist then a downpour,
but still, the wide street leading to the palace
was thick with people,
all waiting for the thumb of a delegate,
whose forehead had been smudged red
by the thumb of the king,
to smudge their foreheads red
on this, the holiest holy day of the year.
Only a few would receive the touch,
a merchant told me in his shop
as he rolled out rug upon rug—
hundreds of blinding stitches per square inch—
and another agreed as he opened
a folded sheet of paper and poured out
polished blue stones on a velvet cloth.
But still they waited, hunkered down
under flapping plastic and broken black umbrellas,
hoping to make a connection
the way one might hope to be connected
by a long chain of handshakes
to Babe Ruth or Alexander Pope
only without the need to stand
in a puddle all day soaked to the skin.
On the ride back to the hotel,
in the backseat of a taxi
I blackened one of my thumb pads
with a pen then pressed it to my forehead,
to show the world my belief
that even though we will all turn to ashes,
there may be an afterlife for some of us—
a realm of ink and wind-blown shelves,
a dominion of book spines and blown-out candles.
And that became the central tenet of the religion
I founded that day in a green
car driven by a suicidal Nepalese
in a bizarre hat with orange flowers around his neck.
The central and only tenet, I resolved,
as I looked out the rain-streaked windows
at the thin children,
the holy men shuffling along in their flip-flops,
carts piled with wet apples,
and on one sidewalk, groups of shiny wet ducks
huddled together in the rain,
presided over by men wagging long, pliant sticks.
Christmas Sparrow
The first thing I heard this morning
was a rapid flapping sound, soft, insistent—
wings against glass as it turned out
downstairs when I saw the small bird
rioting in the frame of a high window,
trying to hurl itself through
the enigma of glass into the spacious light.
Then a noise in the throat of the cat
who was hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in the cold night
through the flap of a basement door,
and later released from the soft grip of teeth.
On a chair, I trapped its pulsations
in a shirt and got it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the nest of cloth.
But outside, when I uncupped my hands,
it burst into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
then disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks.
For the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms as I wondered about
the hours it must have spent
pent in the shadows of that room,
hidden in the spiky branches
of our decorated tree, breathing there
among the metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,