cruising the cafés
beneath turquoise sky
sampling nectars
like lonely lovers looking
for amor
An Accordion, I Think
(A poem of privilege on a good day)
I’ve got all the sunrise my eyes can gather.
Every time I need a breath of air,
it’s there;
and every time I need to exhale a stale breath
I just do it
and there’s a place for it to go.
When I am thirsty, there is water,
all manner and mixture of foods for when I hunger;
black-eyed susans, blue-eyed grass
swaying in a puff of wind
when nothing else will soothe me.
I hear you downstairs;
you don’t sing or shuffle your feet,
but I hear music,
an accordion, I think.
Juli and Blue Violets
My task is to paint you
and blue violets,
all abloom on the wood’s edge,
the splash of sunlight on your face,
your hair, a tangled weave
of fallen maple leaves.
I will paint you on a poet’s page,
with subtle shades,
and I will paint shadows
and tall grasses
where I can hide,
a spy who would reveal
the secrets you conceal.
Rhubarb
By April, sour red stalks
push elephant-ear leaves
into near-earth atmosphere.
Rhubarb plans ahead,
years, decades even,
lives sustainably on the interest
of sunlight stored underground,
having folded up its solar collectors
in September,
when the days grow too short
to make sugar.
See how simple is a miracle.
Thoughts in the Rhubarb Patch
The president interrupted programming
to announce that we killed the terrorist.
Ding dong, the witch is dead—
the people are rejoicing,
waving flags with a vengeance,
but it doesn’t mean much in the rhubarb patch.
Violence begets violence,
death begets death;
it seems no excuse for a dance.
Sunlight begets rhubarb,
rhubarb begets pie,
which seems more reason for celebration
than perpetual retaliation,
an eye for an eye for an eye,
ad infinitum.
You Could Fool Yourself
If you fold up your paper,
turn off your radio and TV,
sit on the steps and sip your tea,
watch the birds and speak no words
as the sun rises yellow and round,
making rainbows on the dewy lawn,
you could fool yourself into thinking
there’s no bloody war going on.
II: Just This Side of Invisible
Caucasian
I’m classified as Caucasian
by government agencies
though I have never been
to the Caucasus Mountains
or Asia, for that matter,
but judging by the tint of my skin,
the shape of my face, I can guess
that somewhere in pre-European mist,
a peasant woman was raped by a soldier
in the army of one of the great Khans,
swooping into her village on horseback,
burning it to the ground,
killing her husband, father and brothers.
Perhaps that’s why I dream of horses,
know that nothing I have,
not even the blood in my veins,
has not been stolen from someone.
Vinegar
There was nothing either of them said or could say
that night they saw so much of themselves in each other.
He saw himself in the boy behind bars
and from the son’s point of view,
his old man was locked up too.
At times like this we tend to think in clichés—
what goes around comes around.
The pain they gave, maybe each figured they deserved
when it was given back to them,
though neither of them meant it to be like this.
But her? She didn’t deserve what she got
from the two people she loved the most.
She stuck with them, her love cured them,
but she didn’t live long enough
to see their best years together.
It’s always too late for sorry,
but sorry doesn’t go away.
The old man took his sorry to the grave
while his son lives with a heart full of sorry
and only ghosts to tell it to,
having learned how time vinegars sorry into sorrow.
Like Father, Like Son
The odor of stale smoke and alcohol
enters my bedroom before daylight.
My father wakes me with a whisper,
softly squeezes my shoulder,
gently brushes my cheek,
the way you might expect
a barber’s hand would touch you.
I pretend I’m asleep;
my father pretends with me,
each of us trying to reconcile
the night before.
He knows he kept me from sleeping
him and that whiskey;
the fighting with my mother.
I can feel his guilt and shame
and I know he knows I’ve been crying,
but we don’t say a word about it,
so like each other that way.
Me and Jimmy
We got no driving lessons from our fathers,
no advice on how to negotiate the pot-holed streets;
they just put us behind the wheel, told us to go,
and so we drove, pretending the road was smooth,
like it seemed to be for everyone else.
We ignored the ruts of hurt and bitterness,
the bumps of isolation we felt,
paved them over with self-delusion, false bravery,
thinking that if we turned the radio up loud enough
we could cruise down the road that shook us,
barely hanging on to the wheel,
each so ashamed of our own white knuckles, wide eyes,
we couldn’t admit them even to each other
because we were brought up by fathers
who didn’t talk about what they felt in their hearts,
both of us afraid of running head on into our drunken old man,
out of control again, swerving into our lane.
The Allman Brothers Singing
(For B.)
We hear the song from an empty street,
The Allman Brothers singing
“You’re my blue sky,
You’re my sunny day.”
The song draws us to a joint so dark
we can’t see each others’ faces.
We order beers,
though beer would kill us in waking life,
your soul, my body.
I wake before the bartender
can pull ba
ck the handle on the tap,
saving both of us,
not the way the blues usually ends.
My Mother Crying
I remember that it was snowing,
cold enough in the house
we melted the frost on the window
with our hand prints
to see the car that stopped in the street,
the man from the church coming to the door
carrying a frozen turkey.
I don’t remember
if my father was in the hospital, sick,
or in the other hospital, drying out.
I remember my mother crying,
then calling her sisters,
and that the next day, Thanksgiving,
the house was crowded with cousins,
aunts and uncles, but absent my father.
I remember how quiet was the house
that evening after everyone had left
and I lay in bed with my brother,
unable to sleep, my mother crying,
alone in her bed.
Angels
Teary-eyed, Mom said
God needed another angel;
that’s why he took my baby sister,
all of ten days old.
Another angel; it made sense to me,
just a child, myself.
She stayed in her room days on end;
we heard her crying and did our best
to be good boys.
We played outside all day,
made snow angels all over the yard,
some outside mother’s window,
our way of showing love and sadness
and trying to offer comfort, I suppose.
Wet and cold, when we came inside,
we ate the soup Mom had heated up for us;
She brushed the snow from wings
only she could see,
a different kind of tear
rolling down her cheek, just then.
Kisses
I
I was there, hovering somewhere
over the horizon of their first kiss,
that first real kiss,
the kiss where my father got lost,
forgot every lonely moment of his orphaned past;
realized this touch of lip to lip, tongue to tongue,
was the beginning of a new life
where he could finally settle.
II
I sat in the back seat with my little brother
that Saturday Mom drove us down to Willmar
to pick up Dad from the “hospital”
where he went to dry out.
She told him she loved him,
was so proud of him;
how life would be better now.
She was all over him, kissing him in the car
like we’d never seen them kiss.
Young boys, we were embarrassed, I guess,
by this show of overt affection.
Mom just laughed, kissed him some more,
then turned around and kissed us, too,
while Dad drove us all home,
somehow keeping his hands on the wheel
and the back seat suddenly became crowded
with five more yet-to-be born babies.
III
It was a lingering peck on the cheek,
a goodnight kiss,
though it’s hard to really kiss someone,
with all those tubes in the way,
those monitors blinking,
your wife barely breathing.
When the phone rang late at night,
he answered with a trembling voice,
afraid of what he knew he would hear.
He kissed her one more time,
her skin cold against his lips.
Every night during his last years,
after his tears had dried,
he kissed her in his dreams
and, sometimes, he swore,
she kissed him in return.
Andy Williams Died Today
After a day of waitressing,
my mother came home and waited on her family;
then late at night, finally off her tired feet,
she’d wind down by reading romance novels,
smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee
while listening to those clean-cut crooners hippies hated,
Dean Martin, Perry Como, Vic Damone,
Andy Williams, her favorite,
on the old cabinet stereo, turned down low.
If there is a heaven, I’m pretty sure my mom’s there,
and I hope Andy Williams is there now, too.
And I hope some angel perched on Andy’s shoulder,
will whisper in Andy’s ear, ask him to croon
“Moon River” for my mother.
The Old Guys at Kay’s Kitchen
The old guys, the “regulars,”
sit in the same corner booth every morning,
comfortable as brothers with each other,
coffee cups in hand,
laughing like children one minute,
becoming loud when old arguments surface,
then going silent as stones when talk turns
Four old friends and I, newly retired,
gather at Kay’s for lunch today.
I see us as if from outside, how we must appear
to the young working guys eating their lunch,
and I realize that to them
we’re the old guys in the corner booth
as we reminisce about old ballplayers,
our war, friends gone too soon.
We’re the old guys.
I say it to myself, we’re the old guys,
though we’ve not admitted this to ourselves.
I wonder how this could be possible,
that the years have left so many footprints
on the fading trail behind us.
We bask in the warmth of each others’ presence,
knowing something we could not know yesterday.
this young guy,
workin’ dude, I’d guess,
cap on backward,
sleeves ripped off his t-shirt at the shoulders,
just being respectful,
true to good upbringing,
holds open the door of the Holiday store
for an old guy I see reflected in the glass.
It’s me. Holy crap, it’s me.
I’m an old guy.
When did it happen that people open doors
for me?
I can open my own god damn door.
I’m the one who holds doors open for old folks.
I think, I’m gonna tell that young pup
what’s up and I do;
I walk past him;
right next to the Nut Goodies
I nod once,
whisper like a truck on gravel.
Thanks, Dude
Diagnosis
On the same day
the doctor called with my lab results,
one of the old sisters at the convent
told me about the fate of an eighty-year-old maple,
just a sapling when she entered the sisterhood,
standing beside a building just as old,
scheduled for demolition, unsavable
with faulty wiring, leaky plumbing, crumbling brick.
That maple tree’s got to go, she said,
its insides are as rotten as that building’s
and it’s in the way of new construction.
I didn’t tell her about my failing infrastructure,
my withering leaves, disintegrating heartwood.
I haven’t come to terms with it, myself;
and though my demise is not as imminent
as that of the old building or maple tree,
and it won’t be a wrecking ball
or screaming chainsaw that takes me down,
the earth’s pull on my transient and evanescent bones
feels suddenly stronger today, more insistent.
Sailors Becalmed
I try to summon enough wind
to fill both our sails,
but have barely enough breath
to keep my own sail full.
I fear losing sight of you,
becalmed in my wake
as I ride a fickle wind
over the horizon, knowing
that even if I drop my sails,
I can’t give you the breath
that propels me on my journey,
it blows for my sail alone.
The best I can do is drop anchor,
wait with you as your ship sinks,
keep you afloat in my memory.
Memorial
Spirits are conjured in these songs you loved,
sung by your friends—
a Tennessee stud horse,
a Mexican cook named Ben;
even Frodo, the three-legged dog,
comes limping out of the past
when called by a poem.
But this night belongs to you, old friend,
remembered as you’d have liked—
a barn dance, not a wake,
your ashes blasted starward by a fireworks rocket,
exploding as a fountain of light eclipsing the moon.
Many people report seeing you tonight,
returning when the poet speaks your name,
when the singers sing their songs for you.