You’ll finally sleep easily
on your side of the plot,
all ash and wind and water,
a line of polished wisdom on your self-effacing stone.
On my side the heavy, messy snore
of fungus and tree roots and moles’ nests,
a granite animal howling and scratching above me.
Once before that, I’d love
to take the woman in the mirror to Rome.
To sit at a sidewalk café sipping
cappuccino and grappa
in the roar of Roman traffic
through the lovely rubble of time,
the Rome Piranesi etched,
the Rome Antonioni filmed,
the Rome Shelley praised in poems
“like flame transformed to marble.”
And hold, for only the moment you
will allow me before shyly pulling away
both your hands in both of mine,
and thank you, from the boy I was before
to the man bent before you,
for all the life blossoming around me,
storied, sunlit, timelessly beautiful.
HERE IS MY PROMISE TO YOU, OR MARCO POLO LEAVES THE KITCHEN FOR THE PROVINCES
Every morning battered knees and ankles allow
I will rise in the dark and empty the dishwasher,
quietly setting away plates and spoons
so we begin the trek of day uncluttered.
Every morning I will read the dispatches from
the outer world and leave those facts arranged
on the kitchen table for you to plot
our escape well-armed.
Every morning when the sun breaks
over the neighbor’s ragged shingles
I will worry with you about the children and the babies,
how they are faring on the long trail we have blazed.
And every morning when black coffee charges me
like Marco Polo onto the Silk Road toward distant
China I will set out to write the wonders
my wanderings discover.
So that when you appear in the doorway,
companion still swaddled in the royal blue of night,
my body will swiftly clear the tent
for you to rule as you do so well in silver light.
Between sunrise and sunset I will be away
from your mysteries into the extremities of mine.
Otherwise you can count on me to execute my tasks.
Just as, after dark, I am certain to settle under the sheets
of evening like a blowing, hibernating bear.
Wake me if need be, but know I will be
useless as you address the riddles
of the day, the calamities of night.
But let me tell you as the sun sets what I learned
today. Ahead lies a golden city. Below its parapets
white horses graze. Inside waits a robe embroidered
with a million golden threads.
It lies in the hollow of the valley
over the mountains of your shoulders.
There an emperor, barely a child, slew all his slaves
to banish death. And left behind for us a monument
in the earth, filled, it is said, with rivers of mercury,
stars of diamonds, crossbows set to foil intruders.
Take my hand and let us brave that sight.
Together we have once again survived
the murderous robberies of the night.
WHEN I AM EIGHTY
When I am eighty
I am going to throw a big party
for myself.
When I am eighty
I am going to dress up
in white pants
and a white shirt
with black suspenders
eat out of my hand.
When I am eighty
I am going to get up
at three in the morning
and pace and think
in the quiet.
When I am eighty
I am going to tell story after story
and laugh and laugh
and think all my ideas
are good ones.
When I am eighty
I’m going to be mad as hell
if you don’t do it my way.
When I am eighty
I am going to send grandchildren
on treks along backcountry streams
and go home and read the newspaper.
Because I will know it is younger people
who now must find the lost.
But without me
no one would have any
good stories to tell.
When I am eighty
I will hold the fine silk goblet
of my wife in both my hands.
That will be all the life
I can handle.
EPILOGUE
WEDDING POEM
Marriage is attached
to the center of earth.
Its weight is incalculable.
Before,
it swirls around you
like a gas,
like a collection of stuffed animals,
like a forest fire.
But after the ritual
under the arbor,
the sharing of tea,
the grin of the justice,
the white train floating like a glacier
down the red aisle,
the looping of rings,
the moon dance . . .
it attaches to the feet.
It weighs them down
and supports them
at once.
It is gravity,
which limits us totally,
which makes all life possible.
Acknowledgments
Many of these poems originally appeared in the following periodicals:
Amaranth Review, Art Word Quarterly, Askew, Aurorean, Black Buzzard Review, Borealis, Chronicle Alternative, Concrete Wolf, Echoes, Free Verse, Goodrichie, Ha!, Journal of Family Life, Lilliput Review, Minnesota Monthly, Mojo Risin’, North American Review, North Central Review, Ophelia’s Pale Lilies, Poetry Calendar 1999, Poets On: Refusing, Rag Mag, Recycled Quarterly, Rosebud, Sidewalks, Urthona (UK), Verse Wisconsin, Water-Stone, Whistling Shade.
The following poems were published in anthologies:
“Backscratch Boy” in Essential Love: Poems about Mothers and Fathers, Daughters and Sons, ed. Ginny Lowe Connors, and in The Well-Versed Parent: Poetic Prescriptions for Parenthood, ed. Jane E. Hunter, MD; “My Wife Sleeping beside Me” in Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems on Marriage, ed. Ginny Lowe Connors; “An Engineering Problem” in Poets On: 20th Anniversary Reprise, ed. Ruth Daigon; “When You Are Ready, Climb” and “The Morning of the Wedding” in My Heart’s First Steps; “To Make a Baby” in Family Matters: Poems of Our Families; “A Mirror in Rome” in 25 Minnesota Poets/2014.
Thanks to the editors for permission to reprint.
Special gratitude to the Anderson Center for residencies which allowed me to organize and revise this manuscript. And to poet, teacher, editor, and friend Thomas R. Smith, always the first reader of my poems.
“Wedding Poem” may be reproduced free forever.
Credit: Larry Marcus
JAMES P. LENFESTEY is a former college English instructor, alternative school administrator, marketing communications consultant, and editorial writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he won several Page One awards for excellence. Since 2000, he has published a memoir, Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain, a collection of personal essays and five collections of poems. He edited two poetry anthologies and coedited Robert Bly in This World. As a journalist, he has covered education, energy policy, and climate science. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife of fifty years. They have four children and eight grandchildren.
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