while her tub stayed hot
as pages turned
faster and faster.
AFTER SHE SLEEPS
After she sleeps
no end of possibilities . . .
Mixtures of chocolate chip
ice cream, bananas
and pears.
Drinking amber maple syrup
direct from the can.
Ecstatic readings of Kabir
and Cold Mountain
with much strutting
and waving of arms
before the refrigerator.
A story composed for the children
on the cold marble table
about riding winged snails
on their slime trails
into perilous encounters.
And how bears, when together,
tend to mumble
which is why bears are so big.
And ketchup on fresh poetry,
mushrooms sautéed with wordplay,
a plateful on the side
next to sweet ice cream
and burnt morning coffee.
She knows all about it
and it’s all right.
Just leave the kitchen clean
in the morning.
LUNCH-MAKING
Crumbs cast enormous shadows
under the track lights
onto the marble table—
cracker bits from the baby,
sugar crystals, coffee grounds,
a towering Cheerio,
fallen stamens under the plant.
I did not see any of these before.
To me they belonged in the kitchen
with the silverware, the stove,
the other household gods.
The goddess sees otherwise.
She refuses to reign in this place
unless there are neither crumbs
nor the shadows of crumbs.
I have slowly seen the light
glancing off freshly wiped marble.
To her it is very satisfactory.
Now lunch-making can begin.
SATURDAY NIGHT
Small doses
on Saturday night
of a fine meal and
good theatre and
afterward a chocolate torte
with crème fraîche and
cappuccino and then Irish coffee
and when you get home
the kids are asleep and
the babysitter’s paid
and a bolt on the door
and a few whiffs of the vapors
and magically
in the act of touching her
a small series of explosions
under the fingertips
and fantasies become realities
in prolonged processions
and wife
rhymes with life.
OH GOD, HOW DEEP
Spring orchards leave me weak
in blazing petals, my
nose covered with pollen.
Most wait to eat the fruit. I can’t,
buzzing to the vibrance
of white blossoms, sweetness
somewhere deep within.
At night, familiar incense rises
from her branches,
pulls me toward her like a falcon
toward a sparrow,
like mist above cool water.
Yes, whispers the soft stem
of my spine.
Yes, I will do anything.
Oh God, how deep.
THEY WILL HAVE TO UNDERSTAND
The sales managers line up
before breakfast
for their ad campaigns
and the CEO chews on me
for lunch
and the Annual Report caws
its insistent midnight deadline in my ear
and when I rub my eyes
I see only a red, crumbling wave.
So if I run harder into the night,
my lungs will have to understand.
If I push my dinner
into the garbage disposal
and my fork slips
and the silver spits back
mangled
and scream at the windows
and terrify the children
and my wife steps out the door
holding herself,
they will have to understand.
I do not do it often.
They will have to understand.
HERE, TAKE THIS POEM
I am explaining my side of the story
in a courtroom.
Each dish done, oil changed, fire built
is notched in my belt.
Each key forgotten, garage door stuck,
toilet paper roll unmounted
is billed against her.
On and on, evening the record
against her relentless prosecution:
underwear on the floor, hair
in the sink, late again for dinner.
For a decade I have tried this case.
Judgment radiates off me like darts.
But the courtroom is secret:
no cameras, no reporters,
nothing spoken out loud, ever.
Today, the case is close to resolution.
Today I will tell her.
Here, take this poem.
EVEN AS THE PASSION COOLS
Were you to construct a temple
of thighs,
a Grand Canyon of thighs,
a kachina of the thigh spirits,
a wooden bowl of white fermented milk,
a chalice of wine . . .
Were I to construct a cross,
my forearm softly across your throat,
your menorah of wide-stretched limbs,
the drumbeats of supplicant societies
pulsing inside you,
and dancers,
hundreds of them,
and hoards of dreamy reptiles . . .
The temple of the Lord
is a deep canyon,
the church a riverbed,
the bed the reflected river clouds,
the coverlet the movement of sand grains,
the song a flute of reeds,
the bank the riverbank,
the deposit
a pool of silver minnows,
the book the geology
of pink walls,
the astronomy a slit
of black stars overhead.
A coyote howls in the canyon.
Marmots look up from their
stiff grazing.
Fish stop swimming and are carried
downstream by the current.
And particular white moths flutter down
in clouds
over the extended white fingers
of a plant of spines.
When they touch, new gods are born,
even as the passion cools.
THE HAND OF GOD
. . . nothing can be sole or whole
that has not been rent.
—W. B. YEATS
Blue is the color of my true love’s veins.
Red her cracked and bleeding lips.
Salt tides cascade through her hair.
Hurricanes hiss at teeth and cheeks.
As the ocean inside her rolls,
as she makes room.
As she makes room,
flowering herself,
petal by petal.
As she makes room,
standing on herself,
step by step.
Push, urges the doctor.
Push, pleads the husband.
Push, demands the shocked
and dangling fish.
She hears only
the tympanum of her skin,
the melting of her bones.
Then on her face
the hand of God appears,
blue as the sea.
It flows over her stretched lips
and standing veins,
dividing her with a touch
into two slick suckling dolphins
soft as jellyfish
amid leaping saltwater cries beside her:
I believe
I believe
I believe
PART TWO
She Who Thinks Like a Fish Thinks
SELF-PORTRAIT: NEWBORN FATHER AND SON
Can a woman forget her nursing child . . .?
— ISAIAH 49:15
Look at him,
maniac sweating in
his straightjacket,
a scalded prune,
ancient projectile,
unused warhead,
sneaky prototype!
But the cry’s the thing,
air raid siren terrorizing
the night while mother
snatches bandages
of sleep between
bombing runs.
Although he can’t see,
he searches, sonar honing
straight for mother’s milk.
What immense, unfunny joke
was played on man, born
breastless! Worse, a paltry
mockery of the need!
Humorless, his siren wails,
bombs fall, as stunned father
and son pace back and forth
in the trembling shelter of
their upended world.
SHE WHO THINKS LIKE A FISH THINKS
for Dora at three weeks
At two in the morning, in the lake
of my wife’s breathing, with headlights
floating across the ceiling,
your dark, underwater eyes sweep
toward my face. Your fingers reach,
then pull away.
You cannot place me yet
in your old aquarium cracked
and spilled to noise and light
three weeks ago tonight.
I offer you my little finger,
familiar, perhaps, as a passing eel,
and moist breath for your cheeks
so red and angry at the roughness
of our air.
But a father’s breath
cannot yet calm
you who think
like a fish thinks.
Your dark eyes
and minnow fingers
swim away.
LEARNING TO SPEAK MAX
hát is anything that can fit
on the head and be celebrated
burb, everything that flies through the air
báybee is all people
úrt is every pain
árk is without light
máma is she who pushed you out
and pulled you back
and
dáda, ah . . . he’s the one
who holds you
terrified.
IF WE WERE BEARS
Belches like bear grunts
rumble from me
as I lumber along the floor
swabbing up midnight puke.
Whimpering son,
pale as moonlight,
eyes of melting ice,
breath of fiery volcanoes,
sweet sick boy, try to sleep.
Let our mammalian memories
erase the scent
of all this wasted food.
If we were bears,
we could sleep inside the earth
until we’re well again. As
humans, we can only hibernate
in each other’s arms till nausea,
that red-hatted hunter,
gives up and quietly
goes home.
SINGING THE BABIES TO SLEEP
Crib in the closet, another up
the stairs with the rope rail,
every night home I sing the babies to sleep—
Irene good night, Irene good night,
with Huddie Ledbetter, Pete Seeger,
my father, mother, cousins, and
sisters singing Irene together by heart.
I stroke them with my hands
up and down unsettled backs as I sing
(they slept on their tummies then), bathed and
snugged by Susan into cotton sacks.
Stop your rambling, stop your gambling,
Stop staying out late at night,
Go home to your wife and family,
Stay there by the fireside bright.
I sing until we all sleep, they in their cribs,
and the man bent over them, exhausted from
staying up late at night, the rambling, the
gambling, home now by the fireside bright.
DON’T LEAVE ALBERT EINSTEIN WITH THE KIDS!
Don’t leave Albert Einstein
with the kids!
He’ll abandon them behind the
cabbage at the supermarket
while calculating love
at the speed of squeeze.
He’ll lose them in the park
watching love bend like light
round the swing set, astonished
at the grip of its gravity.
He finds love more strange,
charmed, up, down,
top, bottom,
than ever known
before a child’s birth—
a fundamental force.
MONSTER AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE
He stomps downstairs,
FE FI FO FUM, demanding
breakfast blood and bones.
Eyes hooded by tangled hair
flare if whims
aren’t promptly served
by morning slaves.
But this round table holds
neither knights nor knaves,
only more monsters
tangled in their own loose
shirts and untied shoes
as the school bus dragon rumbles
and belches its hideous black
and yellow armor
toward our gate.
When it eats these grisly morsels
for the day,
the king and queen lean low
and clink our morning mead.
WHEN YOU ARE READY, CLIMB
You hug your mother like a life vest,
shun me like deep water.
I know. She saved your life.
At the instant of your birth
she knew you were too blue.
She woke the doctor, me,
you both so frightened then
you cling to each other now
as if there were no gravity.
I wait.
When you are ready,
climb.
Pull my branches.
Crack my limbs.
Strip my leaves.
My roots are deep.
As deep as I am tall.
As wide as I am deep.
When you are ready,
climb.
STRAWBERRIES
With my children
I more eager than they
through the rows
stooping with joy
Racing back to the car
far too many sweet quarts
berries falling like
red pebbles
on the green path
ANGEL AT EIGHTH-GRADE GRADUATION
Two plus parrot plus
egg plus wing plus sky.
How much is it worth, Max?
I know you know.
You were born with
the feathers of archangels.
When your bicycle crashed
into the streetlight
your broken wheel sang
like a harp.
When your skateboard soared
into a stop sign,
your forearm snapped
in a puff of quills.
Nothing in school can ground
that flight.
But teachers will help
improve your landings.
So when you do touch down,
nothing truly valuable
will be broken.
And your life, a flock
of untamed birds, will somehow
turn away from danger
en masse, as if at signal.
IF YOU BECOME A MONK
To children, earth is flat as a yard,
labor the distance a lawn mower cuts.
Food is fast. Bed is home.
Only with decades of study will
you discover more substantial fare.
So when you find yourself
driving a tractor back and forth
beneath the iron lid of the horizon,
or driving an iron across damp sheets,
or shifting papers against the iron
ticking of the office clock,
you will have a chest of treasure
to open in your mind.
And if you become a monk,
what wonders will occupy your cell!
TO A YOUNG DAUGHTER