Thank you for the Patriot missile system
And Motorola’s Iridium
Satellite phone technology,
Which was well conceived but lost a lot of money.
Mostly, thank you for telling my sister and me
That we were special when we weren’t.
We still think of Mom’s beloved malapropisms—
That afghani, for example, under which you laid
For months, dying of a terrible treatise.
I now know I’m allowed to say anything I want.
But there’s little more to say. Do you
Remember carrying us to bed each night for years?
I want to feel my sleep again like a bear
Hug, like the return of that kidnapped
Child I once pretended to be.
But there’s no more bear, no sleep,
No child’s play. Thank you anyway
For telling me about the voices in your head,
Which got you fired and persisted for thirty years . . .
The astral planes . . . the leprechauns . . . the elementals
Fertilizing vegetables in your garden . . .
And the most important thing you never said
But taught me about the stars—
That their observers are equally unknown.
III
TROUBADOUR
When I was a boy and my fist
Would land into my father’s arm,
I’d cry out, and he’d say,
Didn’t hurt me none.
He’s been dead nine years now,
And my work is still to try
To beat myself up
And make the pain last.
TO DREAM
To take a forty-one-day walk in the desert
And a bone-cold shower
And a very good shit.
To die taking that shit
On the outskirts
Of Nogales.
To see the dead girl’s ear
As an embryo inverted
And her lungs as
The gates of clouds.
To get so tired of breathing
It’s breathtaking.
HUE AND CRY
What’s in a life?
Yesterday.
What’s the point of history?
Today.
What in the world do you want?
Tomorrow.
If tomorrow were already gone?
Wine.
What does the arc of your life resemble?
I’ve forgotten.
A rainbow?
No, I’d have held on to that.
A bridge?
No, I’d have jumped.
A willow leaf floating on the surface of a river?
That’s it.
Which—the leaf or the river?
On.
On?
And on and of, too.
SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER
Many tragic things can happen to a squirrel.
Like Thoreau, I’ve detailed them all in my journal:
Coyote and golf ball attacks, sudden-onset
Lead poisoning, anaphylactic shock, et cetera.
My tally is a tiny monument without a flag.
Or so I wrote to a couple of nature mags.
Must one face a death at the psychiatrist’s?
She’s there to talk to and witness
One cry on standby once a week.
Twice, if one tampers with the background ink
On the script. But to hell with pills. Friends,
Send down your scat and acorns
On my head. I can take the gravity after all—
Without it, the tears might never fall.
SOLITARY
Paranoid schizophrenics suffer
From never being bored.
So, too, with kittens and snails.
Behind prison walls, the sun
Is not a star, the moon is
Never written about,
And shit just doesn’t happen.
And Pluto shouldn’t be there.
May you live one day forever
With no knowledge of it.
MEDITATION
Jai alai is a sport involving a ball
Bouncing off a walled
Space, and everything in your body
Shall end in oncology.
When it’s time to leave
This world, try not to pretend
To feel things you don’t feel. And then
Try harder to pretend to be real.
CONSCIOUSNESS
I command my car only in German.
I talk with my wife only in English.
I scold our children only in Mandarin.
When I hold our first grader
In my arms, as he falls asleep,
I picture him clutching the dead
Version of me I’ll never see.
My daughter—she’ll clutch him
Clutching me. My wife I can’t
Picture. But she must be there
In the background, breathing
Hard against a tree. When I go,
I’ll remember us on vacation, riding
Here in the car, everyone looking
Out the windows, talking at once—
Except me. That’s when I close
My eyes, lift my hands just off
The wheel, and try to imagine
A language without the world.
DAYENU
Beach-blaséd, titanium-dioxide-larded, windswept with mollusk dust,
I appreciate you, St. Joseph State Park, Florida,
and dear friend Nathan who suggested you.
Goodbye for now, brown pelicans; we’ll see you in New Orleans
when you make a pit stop. Goodbye, trails
and sand dunes that reminded us of Leelanau,
Michigan, except for the ropes we were not supposed to limbo,
much less traverse. Goodbye, screened-in picnic
bench where we ate Old Bay steamed shrimp
and imagined crawfish étouffée. Goodbye, certain wildernesses;
even unexplored, you were sweet to us. Thank you,
dolphin couple, three-deer family, and opalescent
blue crab who lost the staring contest with my son.
Behold mighty mosquitoes who yet carry our blood
and make me ponder a decayed John Donne.
Praise be for citronella, eucalyptus, rosemary, and above all DEET!
Strange praise for boners that still grace me
first thing in the morning, as though
tines of a rake I’ve dumbly stepped on. Thanks be to gallberry,
prickly pear, and all manner of endangered botanics
I am unable to name. Farewell, exit/
entrance and Miss Catherine’s crisp park ranger khakis, wrinkled
lips, and zealous arm-waving. I didn’t for a second
think of Saint Catherine or her breaking wheel
or the million-dollar homes I’d never want to own at any cost,
but which we soon admired driving past.
And almighty thanks that my preteen loves to read
fantasy novels in quietude on car rides home, punctuated
only by my dyspepsia, and that he doesn’t especially
care for prolix or fatherly advice. Selah.
EASTER
Jesus and I head down
&nb
sp; the beach and climb over
the rocks to go fishing.
He thinks He knows the best
spots, but more often
than not He doesn’t.
No matter. We sit there,
toes in the water, expecting
one of our lines to sing.
When nothing happens,
the Holy Ghost accuses us
of “possessing an appetite
for violence that isn’t
entertainment.” It’s true.
I expect the lonely children
in town to fall into abandoned
wells. But even the popular
children say they wish other
popular children would fall
into abandoned wells.
Jesus calls this “empathetic
fallacy.” Later at home,
where week-old wine sits
on the kitchen table, He
makes me understand that
silence is best broken
by a greater silence.
I stare at the bottle
but can’t pour a drop
in the glass. “Alcohol,”
Jesus says, “is more work
than we’re able to give it.”
So we take turns gazing
out the window at the evening
sky, the treeless yard,
and the children still
searching the grass for eggs.
If one of them gets stung
by a bee, part of me will
be saddened. If none do,
part of me will be
disappointed, too.
Monday morning I wake and see
Jesus, faintly in the distance.
He’s back at the water,
sweeping arms side to side
in grand strokes, as if painting
waves with the heads of
His people. It appears to be all
the rage in paradise. But I
know He’d argue otherwise.
EMPATHY
Who knows if it works out
The way most people want?
It’s a bit unnerving, for instance,
To watch someone else extract
A broken wineglass from the garbage
Disposal. Yet it’s oddly satisfying to
Dig out those same shards oneself.
One by one, tenderly, until a finger’s
Pricked. As a method of penitence,
It rarely soothes. As a display of
Affection, it’s nearly foolproof.
CHRIST OF THE OZARKS
Because often a couple of them faint from the lashings,
It requires three Jesuses to put on The Great Passion Play.
Didn’t you know? Cedar waxwings will wait for berries
To ripen and ferment in order to get good and high.
I shall love berries and birds and lashings. I shall pick up
Cold meds and Drano at the Promised Land Drive-Thru.
I shall go to the airport in Fayetteville to watch planes
Take off again and again, to imagine the moment after
The moment God lays me down, at last, in a grass casket.
KINDNESS
As you grow older, you think you know a little
Something about existence, like whether or not
You come from banana people. I don’t believe
I come from banana people, but that doesn’t mean
There wasn’t a banana gatherer in the family
Generations ago. If I did come from banana people
And, say, you also came from banana people,
Would that make us treat each other better?
Would the little we know about existence
Turn out to be more or less true if our ancestors
Broke bananas together instead of bread?
I don’t know. But here’s a thing: Today we’re
Most likely to eat one kind of banana—Cavendish—
And each comes from a clone, not a seed.
CRITICAL THINKING
When we read A Lesson Before Dying
We’re all moved especially by the ending,
The white man asking the black man
To be his friend. One of my peers, however,
Points out how badly the female characters
Are rendered in the novel. The teacher agrees
But can’t seem to find it in herself to blame
The author. There’s something about literature
I’ll never quite understand. Take this simile:
Hope sits on the students like sweat glistening.
It doesn’t really. The AC is just out again.
And our teacher doesn’t have the nerve
To tell us to wipe it off because she knows
Soon enough it’ll evaporate on its own.
REFLECTION
The left eye has more floaters,
but it’s the right eye
whose cornea a tennis ball
slashed forty-eight summers ago.
The smoke detector has blinked
its last blink, assuring me
that everything is conceivable.
The letter on the counter, for instance,
is stamped Return to Sender,
but I never mailed it. At dawn
I intended to walk down to the box,
then found myself at the end of
the jetty. As I observed my hanging
feet, I swear I saw an eyelash beating
itself between two barnacles.
An old sutra visited me:
Life may be a game, but if you think so,
you’re not playing it properly.
In fact, I think I could hike
that mountain of waves and never return
if I didn’t have to see it
first in my mind’s eye.
There are only epiphanies,
and always have been.
ON MY OTHER MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY
Yoga master said,
Draw all your attention
To the mat.
As with all things, be present . . .
If you are cooking, cook . . .
If you are reading a book,
Read . . . And so when I visited her
Grave, I didn’t bring flowers.
I got down among the fire ants
And, with car keys, cut
A pattern in the grass
So that it looked at the edges
Like frosting on a cake. I stood
In the center and pretended
To be one of fifty-nine candles.
Ants began biting my ankles,
Higher and higher they climbed,
As even breath fed the flame.
NOBLE SONG
Bells clearly rang and clouds appeared
To eat the summer grass. Tea steeped.
A window broke. The seacoast
Filled with Nova Scotia dulse.
Christmas came without presents.
Books went unread. No—to
The church. No—to the beach.
Children threw themselves on beds.
Someone rummaged the attic.
Someone preferred their ruin in the rain,
Which tasted good all the way
To the end of the pier. Everyone
Always missed the last train.
Nobody ever gathered at the piano—
&nb
sp; Until the dying one began wailing
Not unlike a bird of prey.
REVELATIONS
When they say, Time heals all wounds,
They mean, Worlds.
When they say, Worlds,
They mean, You won’t even recall how much you’ll forget.
When they say, Forget,
They mean, Someday you won’t know the name of your daughter.
When they say, Daughter,
They mean, God.
When they say, God,
They mean, Eternity.
When they say, Eternity,
They mean, Until you are gone, too.
When they say, Gone,
They mean, Everyone.
When they say, Everyone,
They mean, We have no idea what happens after this.
When they say, This,
They mean, Words.
When they say, Words,
They mean, Meaning.
When they say, Meaning,
They mean, That which passes for understanding.
When they say, Understanding,
They mean, Peace.
When they say, Peace,
They mean, By which the end is justified.
When they say, Justified,
They mean, Amen.
When they say, Amen,
They mean, Say no more.
When they say, More,
They mean, Get on your knees again.
When they say, Again,
They mean, Love, Love, Love.
NOTES
Spiritual Exercises: The title of this book is borrowed from Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Ignatius was a sixteenth-century Spanish soldier turned mystic who advocated finding “God in all things” and educating the whole person in body, mind, and spirit. Originally designed for a thirty-day silent retreat, his Spiritual Exercises involve reexamining one’s life through a series of prayers and contemplations.
“Forms of Love” modifies a phrase from the poet June Gehringer; thank you.
“Echo” is for Echo Matthews.
“Bound” is modeled after a poem by A. R. Ammons.
“Why a Perfectly Good, Almighty, All-Knowing God Permits Evil” borrows its opening partially from a line in a James Galvin poem.