in the painter’s life
to give her this line.
I don’t wonder about the person
who painted HIV under the STOPS
on the stop signs in the same way.
NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE
Did some miracle startle
the painter into action
or is she waiting and hoping?
Does she ride the bus with her face
pressed to the window looking
for her own message?
Daily the long wind brushes YES
through the trees.
LIVING AT THE AIRPORT
Because they lived near a major airport,
their children were always flying over their heads.
Assimilating into cloud till specks of ground life
became smaller even than lives together remembered:
the floor furnace they leapt over for whole winters,
its gaping hot breath. How far they had come from
the clumsy navy stroller in the hall with its bum wheel and brakes.
The mother used to cry, pushing that thing.
Sometimes now the father went to the airport just to see
people saying good-bye and hello. Especially the good-bye gave him relief.
Before boarding, families looked so awkward together.
Repeating, Now you be good, hear? Give a call if you can.
They seemed almost desperate
to get away.
Since so many suitcases had their own wheels now,
he wondered, had the old rooted suitcases gone to live in attics
stuffed with unseasonable clothes, or junkyards with disappeared cars,
and what staple of their lives might have wheels next, not to mention
wings?
STRING
At certain hours we may rest assured that nearly everyone inside
our own time zone or every adjacent time zone lies asleep and then
we may begin to speak to them through the waves and folds of their dreaming
then we may urge them on beg them not to forget
though so many days have driven in between us and original hopes
as a boy stands back from his earlier self mocking it
and the light of fireflies blinking against an old fence has become
as sad as it is lovely because so many hands are gone by now
it is not that we wanted the light to be caught but reached for
that was it
Tonight it is possible to pull the long string and feel someone moving far away
to touch the fingers of one hand to the fingers of the other hand
to tug the bride and widow by the same thread to be linked to every mother
every father’s father even the man in the necktie in Washington
who kept repeating You went the wrong way, you went the wrong way
with such animation he might have been talking about his own life
My friend took my son for his first ride on a bicycle’s back fender
He said Are you sure it is okay to do this?—We have been doing it forever
I loped behind thinking how much has been denied him for living in a city
in the 1990s but this was a town the dreamy grass slow spoke
clipped hedges
Just then a light clicked on inside tall windows draped tablecloth
pitcher of flowers lace of evening spinning its intricate spell
inside our blood and what we smelled was earth and rain sunken into it
run-on sentence of the pavement punctuation of night and day
giving us something to go by a knot in the thread
although we did not live in that house
FUEL
Even at this late date, sometimes I have to look up
the word “receive.” I received his deep
and interested gaze.
A bean plant flourishes under the rain of sweet words.
Tell what you think—I’m listening.
The story ruffled its twenty leaves.
*
Once my teacher set me on a high stool
for laughing. She thought the eyes
of my classmates would whittle me to size.
But they said otherwise.
We’d laugh too if we knew how.
I pinned my gaze out the window
on a ripe line of sky.
That’s where I was going.
COMING SOON
Today reminded me of Christmas—bright and utterly lonely.
Coleman Barks
I placed one toe
in the river of gloom.
On the streets of the cold city
a man with two raw gashes at his temple
fingered them gently.
Middle-aged sisters selling old plates and postcards
Three Floors of Bargains *** Step Right In !
stared glumly at a large clock.
December was just beginning.
One touched up her lipstick.
She could see herself between the 6 and 7.
Sunday-school children ate cookies
shaped like trees.
A waiter draped garlands of crumpled greenery
above the door of his restaurant,
adjusting the velvet bow.
A toothless woman wearing plastic bags
asked for the hour, which I gave her
too enthusiastically.
Here they came again.
Rolls of wrapping paper.
Red letters of ads.
I wasn’t hungry
for the countdown.
Cluttered days
so sharp they cut.
What about our people
on the giant list of loves?
What would we give them
this time around?
The days say we will
look and look and look.
I plunged my foot
into the river of gloom,
it said it did not need me.
PANCAKES WITH SANTA
Santa has a bad memory.
Santa forgets your name
the minute he talks
to the next person.
Santa calls you by a baby’s name
and doesn’t even know.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Should you tell Santa?
Already he thought you were a girl
though you just had a haircut
last week.
How can he remember
all those wishes?
How will Santa ever find
our house?
The world has turned to
red sweaters, jingles,
freezing rain.
Santa says he’s on a diet,
that’s why he’s not eating pancakes
with the rest of us.
Mrs. Claus told him to
lose some weight.
Santa keeps drifting back
for more chatting.
He sits down at our table.
What else can we say to Santa?
Santa says ain’t.
ALASKA
The phone rang in the middle of the Fairbanks night and was always a wrong number for the Klondike Lounge. Not here, I’d say sleepily. Different place. We’re a bunch of people rolled up in quilts. Then I’d lie awake wondering, But how is it over there at the Klondike? The stocky building nestled between parking lots a few blocks from our apartment like some Yukon explorer’s good dream of smoky windows and chow. Surely the comforting click of pool balls, the scent of old grease, flannel, and steam. Back home in Texas we got wrong numbers for the local cable TV company. People were convinced I was a secretary who didn’t want to talk to them. They’d call four times in a row. Sir, I eventually told a determined gentleman, We’ve been monitoring your viewing and are sorry to report you watch entirely too much television. You are currently ineligible for cable services. Try reading a book or something. He didn’t call
back. For the Klondike Lounge I finally mumbled, Come on over, the beer is on us.
SO THERE
Because I would not let one four-year-old son
eat frosted mini-wheat cereal
fifteen minutes before dinner
he wrote a giant note
and held it up
while I talked on the phone
LOVE HAS FAILED
then he wrote the word LOVE
on a paper
stapled it twenty times
and said
I STAPLE YOU OUT
*
memory stitching
its gauze shroud
to fit any face
he will say to his friends
she was mean
he will have little interest
in diagramming sentences
the boy / has good taste
enormous capacities
for high-tech language
but will struggle
to bring his lunchbox home
I remember / you
you’re / the one
I stared at in the / cloud
when I wasn’t paying / attention
to people / on the ground
*
the three-year-old wore twenty dresses
to her preschool interview
her mother could not make her
change
take some off her mother pleaded
and the girl put on a second pair of tights
please I’m begging you
what will they think of us
the girl put all eight of her pastel barrettes
into her hair at once
she put on
her fuzzy green gloves
she would have worn four shoes but could not
get the second pair on top of the first pair
her mother cried you look like a mountain
who has come to live with me
she had trouble walking
from the car up to the school
trouble sitting
in the small chair that was offered
the headmistress said
my my we are a stubborn personality
ACROSS THE BAY
If we throw our eyes way out to sea,
they thank us. All those corners
we’ve made them sit down in lately,
those objects with dust along
their seams.
Out here eyes find the edge
that isn’t one.
Gray water, streak of pink,
little tap of sun,
and that storm off to the right
that seems to like us now.
How far can the wind carry
whatever lets go? Light
shining from dead stars
cradles our sleep. Secret light
no one reads by—
who owns that beam?
Who follows it far enough?
The month our son turned five
we drove between cotton fields
down to the bay. Thick layers
of cloud pouring into one another
as tractors furrowed the earth,
streams of gulls dipping down
behind. We talked about
the worms in their beaks.
How each thing on earth
searches out what it needs,
if it’s lucky. And always
another question—what if?
what if?
Some day you’ll go so far away
I’ll die for missing you,
like millions of mothers
before me—how many friends
I suddenly have! Across the bay
a ship will be passing, tiny dot
between two ports meaning nothing
to me, carrying cargo useless to my life,
but I’ll place my eyes on it
as if it held me up. Or you rode
that boat.
MY UNCLE’S FAVORITE COFFEE SHOP
Serum of steam rising from the cup,
what comfort to be known personally by Barbara,
her perfect pouring hand and starched ascot,
known as the two easy eggs and the single pancake,
without saying.
What pleasure for an immigrant—
anything without saying.
My uncle slid into his booth.
I cannot tell you—how I love this place.
He drained the water glass, noisily clinking his ice.
My uncle hailed from an iceless region.
He had definite ideas about water drinking.
I cannot tell you—all the time. But then he’d try.
My uncle wore a white shirt every day of his life.
He raised his hand against the roaring ocean
and the television full of lies.
He shook his head back and forth
from one country to the other
and his ticket grew longer.
Immigrants had double and nothing all at once.
Immigrants drove the taxis, sold the beer and Cokes.
When he found one note that rang true,
he sang it over and over inside.
Coffee, honey.
His eyes roamed the couples at other booths,
their loose banter and casual clothes.
Uncle who finally left in a bravado moment
after 23 years, to live in the old country forever,
to stay and never come back,
maybe it would be peaceful now,
maybe for one minute,
I cannot tell you—how my heart has settled at last.
But he followed us to the sidewalk
saying, Take care, Take care,
as if he could not stand to leave us.
I cannot tell—
how we felt
to learn that the week he arrived,
he died. Or how it is now,
driving his parched streets,
feeling the booth beneath us as we order,
oh, anything, because if we don’t,
nothing will come.
ENTHUSIASM IN TWO PARTS
Maybe a wasp will sting my throat again
so the high bouillon surge of joy
sweetens the day.
Shall I blink or wave?
Simply stand below the vine?
Since the stinger first pierced my throat
and a long-held note of gloom suddenly lifted,
I’ve considered poisons with surprise applications.
Happy venom.
Staring differently at bees, spiders,
centipedes, snakes.
*
We’re more elastic than we thought.
Morning’s pouf of goodwill
shrinks to afternoon’s tight nod.
We deliver cake to aged ladies
who live alone,
just to keep some hope afloat.
Those who are known,
rightly or wrongly,
as optimists, have a heavier boat
than most. If we pause,
or simply look away,
they say, What’s wrong?
They don’t let us throw
anything overboard
even for a minute.
But that’s the only way
we get it back.
OUR SON SWEARS HE HAS 102 GALLONS OF WATER IN HIS BODY
Somewhere a mistaken word distorts the sum:
divide becomes multiply so he’d wrestle his parents
who defy what he insists. I did the problem
and my teacher said I was right!
Light strokes the dashboard.
We are years away from its source.
Remember that jug of milk?
No way you’re carrying one hundred of those!
But he knows. He always knows. We’re idiots
without worksheets to back us up. His mother never remembers
; what a megabyte means and his dad fainted on an airplane once
and smashed his head on the drinks cart. We’re nice but we’re
not always smart. It’s the fact you live with, having parents.
Later in a calmer moment his dad recalculates
the sum and it comes out true.
Instead of carrying giant waterfalls inside,
we’re streams, sweet pools, something to dip into
with an old metal cup, like the one we took camping,
that nobody could break.
MORNING GLORY
The faces of the teachers
know we have failed and failed
yet they focus beyond, on the windowsill
the names of distant galaxies
and trees.
We have come in dragging.
If someone would give us
a needle and thread, or send us
on a mission to collect something
at a store, we could walk for twenty years
sorting it out. How do we open,
when we are so full?
The teachers have more faith than we do.
They have organized into units.
We would appreciate units
if we gave them a chance.
Nothing will ever again be so clear.
The teachers look at our papers
when they would rather be looking at
a fine scallop of bark