Prayer for a Eulogy

That I did not stay a stranger, and
That I did some good on this green earth
That I witnessed, every morning, the virgin birth
And stopped long enough to see the sun rise

That I found the despair beneath all things, and kept looking up
Clinging to the mast until the past, at last, became the past

That I sailed the winter river until the spring
That I broke the addiction to having things
And that I learned to sing, though I had no voice

That I sat beside the lonely ocean and was not scared
That when terrified, I bore up, and bore it well
That I reached out my hands in love, before I fell

So let it be said

That I gave my body—such as it was—broken, for the world
By growing old, and only sometimes hung my head,
That I drank and ate with gratitude, and hiked long trails and
Did not hold in contempt the dirt or dust or other men
And that when I did, I said a prayer to center me in the storm again

And that I learned at last that everything is an act of love, if offered up as such
That simple deeds are atoms of which entire worlds are built

That a tree or the wood or the quiet breeze,
Or the way my dog looked up at me
Were reminders to look up, at last, for love
And that I learned to see all such things, by the end, as clues to some great puzzle,
And markers along the way

That I did my best and strove to bless my dearest hearts
And looked forward to find, to my surprise,
There was no fear of death ahead—
That the fog gave way to warm skies, and orange light,
And a table set
With wine and bread

The Forest and the Wood

I.

The woods, once (and not so long ago)
Spoke to me only of possibility;
They would not let me go, 
Provoking that restlessness of heart which is longing in the dark
The forest was there not so much for going anywhere
But only to be explored

No more:
Now I see there are simply too many paths
And though the beauty still enraptures me,
The past is past, and
Something has been lost
A die is cast
And I can't look past the growing realities
Of dust and ash
As, I am, apparently,
All grown up
And not so very far from old
Like autumn before the cold

I no longer think I can undo them—the forest or the many woods
Not as I thought in my youth, to unlock their puzzle,
And though I would pursue them, still,
Despite their inextricability,
My energy is not what it was
(A new-found cruelty)
Making the mounts all seem insurmountable
A treasure destined to remain locked

So
My road is chosen,
My lot is cast:
My forest paths
Have all become singular
As age has one at last

II.

And yet
There is now a forest in me
Like a garden growing gold in August,
Its autumn seeds to sew

It is now my task to explore one daily path
And to wear it down in love,
Until every stone wears soft
Worn like faithful bones, to hold others up
Yes:
A path for children to walk
A path for coming home

And so I’ll no more roam
Not in the forests of the world, anyway
In this one wood only, I will love
And call my own
And make a home

What She Said After She Stopped and Faced Things

I have feared the white opening of light, I don’t deny it
Feared it, perhaps, not as one dreads the night or the fright of a dark movie
But as one fears the morning that bright seeing brings
As one fears the first note of a symphony 
And what getting started means

Like an animal trembling in a trap
I have moved with such speed
To avoid the reckoning stirring so endlessly inside of me,
Wishing to rise
Inviting me 

But this I did not foresee:

A hand reaching out to hold me
Unburdening cords
On shoulders too long strapped with weight
So unexpected—to find love and grace

And I am like a fawn sprung from the trap
Running on awkward hooves, but growing stronger
Springing up and running on such joyous feet as mine
I find, at last, the ground beneath me

I did not know the dragon would release me if I but faced it
If I simply turned and stopped and spoke its name

Nor that autumn would embrace me, as once it did before the winter 
Enfolding me with falling leaves
And burning smoke
And—better late than never—
The harvest 
And October, in ochre, with its generous jubilee 

The Old Man with His Camera

There is something about the old man with his camera parking his car above the canyon

When life wears you down like rain on rock
And you only have a bit more time to walk 
The dirt, so familiar in one sense, in another, offers only incomprehension:
How have you walked the earth so long and yet remain a stranger, singing an alien's song?

The camera in your hand, old man, gets it:
Looking up at you, it whispers,
"No, not really...
I'm still seeing for the first time
And it's all divine
In fact, the longer I move through time, I only realize
I had no eyes to understand
I took for granted the miracles of bone and blood and grass and land,
Just like you
So use me now
Use me true
We are only now both seeing for the first time"

There is something about starting a new hobby and using all your strength to lift a camera to the sky
There is something about never giving up
And about having at last the time to turn into the scenic view and stand marveling at all the granite

Now, balanced on such heights of rock and age and life
Some cruel tragedy makes you shake your head and laugh out loud
Now you can see it
And while you could never have or hold or handle any of it,
Like a wild bear or moose you cannot touch, but only stare at 
To stand there and see it all and be in awe feels so close to God
Feels so close to the second birth
So close to the renewal of the earth

A Liturgy

Once a year, after mannequin season,
I read Shakespeare and then go down to Morgan's and buy bourbon, distilled in France
And I spend a week's wages for women
Then I cry by the river

It's a simple rhythm 
I can't complain;
It keeps me sane

Every month I take a walk by the docks and smell the fish
My God, it's putrid, of course 
And I think, “People eat this!”

It helps 'mind me that life is a great ocean, unknowable, beautiful
And full of soon-to-be spoiling carcasses
They go together, like dark reality
A theater's marquee and
A murder in the alley

Once a week I go to church
I don't listen much, but I do like to see the latest fashions, the women's skirts
And there are times when the old preacher says something that sends lightning to the ground
(There's not much grass around to burn, though, truth be told)

Each day, at night, if the sky is right
I go stand beneath it 
I stand beneath it and hope it's emptying into my belly
Sometimes I spread my arms out
But I never shout

One must, after all, train one's self to hold one's swaying
That's the world way—the hardest things happen alone
And we are like trains barreling through a long, cold tunnel 
Trusting the unseen bend
Barreling and hoping beyond the end 

Tragedy (Patrick Angus III)

This queer man died of AIDS
My God, it’s strange when tragedy becomes cliché, but 
This queer man, so talented, died of AIDS

And though he was by all means gay, 
He was not very happy 
(You see how words change, 
And we with them, as we try to fit them 
Like lightbulbs into the sockets of our own selves
Lest we become bereft, and wordless)

He used paint, not poetry 
But while I’m on the topic of putting outside of us all our desire, through art, like fire
And like despair, burning the air
I’ll speak of prayer:

I do pray now and then, since prayer goes both ways, 
Both forward and back in time
And I pray for him

I hope and pray he had time to find
The ecstasy of all his longing, bright as day, 
Like chasing butterflies or 
Flying in the skies and not falling into our lovesick, human ways, 
As we grow tired of the trying

I hope he saw it take wings—his longing, 
The little bird inside him joining a great murmuration of starlings

While everything looked on and applauded:
The whisper, the breeze, 
And above all,
The hard bit of tree within us, that somehow never ends
That rises and spins
Like a bird on the wind

The part that hopes to God 
Death does not win 

What Makes a Man

When he was called to the Majors, after pitching a blank and scoreless frame,
He sat in the locker room and cried, as they called up his name, 
And all the good men loitering about looked away 
Or pretended the floor was a marvel to survey

They were happy for him and without judgment or jealousy, 
And though, of course, they wondered about their plot, 
They rejoiced at the turn in his fortune’s lot

There is the courage of warriors and of poets (though even warriors know a little verse),
And since we measure men by how fast they can throw a fastball or run the earth,
Or curve leather and cork above the dirt
We should remind ourselves that muscles, in fact, do not make good men 
And any who can stare into the grandstand of longing and still stand and not give in
Is also worth his salt 

In fact, every man who never sees the Big Leagues but tends the bit of land just in front of him, with devotion and a heart that does not get hard or wintered—
He is good and close to God  

Of these we should also sing, even if they make no Hall
Sing their song, no matter how hard they hit the ball  

Deer at the Gay Bar (Patrick Angus II)

He painted men at gay nightclubs, watching other men undress, obsessed with the moment of unveiling, I guess
Aren’t we all? 
With unveiling, at least, if not the rest

They weren’t his best, but
I was beckoned into the hidden gallery by the sign that said "Adults only"
And rarely tantalized by the hope of something tawdry in a museum gallery, I went inside 

I would have been six or seven when he painted, this man who now has died
And the image of a deer comes strangely to mind
Rising as it tries to find its footfalls and stumbles forward 

Such is every person’s desire: 
To rise,
Until they are buried by whatever shirt-off-the-rack they settle for, thereafter hiding inside it

But Patrick Angus—and all true gods and poets and painters—by God, he reveals the deer’s shy heart 
All of them, with gently stepping hooves, quietly strike the ground
Lest they stick too far down in the mix of mud and grass and be tracked down by the hounds 

He painted a couple, too, sitting quietly on their couch
And in his self-portraits, he is like them, wandering and lost
But in these paintings, maybe not his best, nevertheless he painted 
At his greatest point of longing
Like his subjects, looking for some good thing to find

These men become his best metaphor, take one, take all:
At a gay bar
Every face so sedate, you’d think they’d never cried
The placid face over an inflamed belly, ashamed for having so much desire, eyes averted or looking down
The ground never answering
The ground quiet and silent

But then, one by one, they lift their eyes, some good thing to find, a deer looking for water 
With stoic faces
Alert eyes, 
All poised to not betray the racing heart inside
The stealthy glide into a meadow 
Leaning forward, slowly, like each of us, 
A doe dipping into an answering stream
Hoping one deep drink will turn the tide 

God Bless and Thank Him

May I never forget the man whose name I can’t recall, 
Who called English pounds squids instead of quid
As a dollar is a buck and not a duck, I’ll never know why he did it
Nor why he never smiled, since I thought he was letting me in on a little joke
But no,
He just ordered another pint and told me of his woes
With no self-indulgence, no pity
No invitation to carry his laundry 
Just an honest man, in reality, pointing out all the things that shouldn’t be and icing them with a swig of lager, before a glass of ale
Like we were all old friends

Some sorts are out of sync with life, thank God
We need them, jesters of a mad age
The knaves who personify our frustration, and our longing 
Who refuse to run and duck but look at life with pluck and stand out, the sore thumbs, 
Shirts untucked,
Taking a cigarette and hoping for luck
Stewing in their longing, for love, amid the rust and muck,
Waiting for the bus
Crayons unable to be pushed into their place within the box

God bless them, those un-coy foxes, and may they find happiness
And may we all find, each of us, trust 
On hearts unruffled by time’s dust 
Throwing down a glass upon the table, pushing over our squids,
And saying “One more,” with hearty lust 

The West, 1850

There is the reality 
Of long, hard salt flats shimmering in heat
Desert parched and cracked, longing for the sea
And dust and smoke
With oases and forests which, even still, do not yield much rest, and only dust of gold
And the long ribcage of mountains, old and wise but miserly, tearing earth asunder
Breaking men’s hearts with beauty and the heartache of endless obstacle 
Since the Rockies and the Sierras are, perhaps, the perfect metaphor for life

But above all the dirt floats the great idea
The West and Gold And somewhere northwest of here or there, a gentle god, the Pacific
Cools the dirt-clod feet of weary travelers, penniless and poor 
Who finally break down and sob, but still will say, 
With an adamant start and a sincere stare into the long, blue nowhere 
"I loved the idea which broke my heart"

Pastor and Priest at Starbucks

Perhaps she did not know for certain that I, too, was a pastor, with a flock to tend that morning
But her collar spoke of her lot in some Lutheran or Episcopal church, no doubt
The black and white, a muted frock, still bold enough to speak that the world is full of opposites and absolutes, 
Of bad and right, of dark and light

God, I miss the days of such clear notions
And categories in which to place all things
Though, perhaps, back then, the tradeoff for certainty was a lack of wind
Bereft the joy of a cooling breeze
And the colors, perhaps, were not so bright or full
They shook and wheezed, straining beneath our demand for righteous clarity

She nodded at me, knowingly, like you might before jumping out a foxhole, some line to charge, and I tipped my head, respectfully, as we stepped then into the morning, the sun just swirling the sky into magnificent orange 
The world clearly in its state of longing once again, like a dog waiting for its master at the door

But we knew how patient the day would be with its mystery,
Unhurried and unfolding its secrets slowly,
Never leaving them beyond arm’s reach, and such strong arms with which to hold them, too
Content—the world is, always—to leave so much unsaid
The earth and morning at peace with our unknowing
As we sigh and face the wind

God Bless and Thank Him

May I never forget the man whose name I can’t recall, 
Who called English pounds squids instead of quidAs a dollar is a buck and not a duck, I’ll never know why he did it
Nor why he never smiled, since I thought he was letting me in on a little joke
But no,
He just ordered another pint and told me of his woes
With no self-indulgence, no pity
No invitation to carry his laundry 
Just an honest man, in reality, pointing out all the things that shouldn’t be and icing them with a swig of lager, before a glass of ale
Like we were all old friends

Some sorts are out of sync with life, thank God
We need them, jesters of a mad age
The knaves who personify our frustration, and our longing 
Who refuse to run and duck but look at life with pluck and stand out, the sore thumbs, 
Shirts untucked,
Who just take a cigarette and smoke it and hope for luck
Stewing in their lust and love, 
Waiting for the bus
Crayons unable to be pushed into their place within the box

God bless them, those un-coy foxes, and may they find happiness
And may we all find, each of us, trust 
On hearts unruffled by time’s dust 
Throwing down a glass upon the table, pushing over our squids,
And saying “One more,” with hearty lust 

The Presbyterian Reflects on Communion

It would be wonderful if we all took the blood of Christ seriously 
If we let it demand something of our souls
If we let it in 
Rather than setting it as a serum on the shelf, to cancel sin
As if the goal were to begin, endlessly again, rather than to break free into some God-stoked revelry 

But 

That is hard work and would require true goodness and getting past religion 
Which we have shaped as the thing to numb the sting
And let us wear our Sunday best
As if God looks down with a puffed out chest at how we dressed
At our knotted our ties, and how we rise and genuflect

I wonder if we have not become religious and right, 
The shield against God himself,
The thing that God despises

But, then again, 

Why would we become good when we can just skate by on the great conveyer belt of life, Picking from it, like custards off a lazy Susan, whatever strikes our eyes?
All while we hold the promise, like a promissory note
Of a great piece of heavenly pie, waiting for us above, handed out by a Jesus of our own skin tone and color, who will say “You got your catechism right, so come on in!"

Still,

When we drove away from church I think I saw God, if I saw him right:
He was washing a window with tatted arms, strong and sinewy,
And I remembered some verse: if you can’t love the seen, don’t think you love the unseen

Well, now…shit

Such thoughts would be a grenade among us—
Who trust that our right thinking is the key to St. Peter’s gate
Even if , lately, I’ve grown afraid:
It might be an anchor’s weight, pulling us into a long and lonely sea  
And a sunless morning, long and dull and gray 

The Widower’s Confession

I guess I was so starved for human affection that, 
I confess,
I let the barista's eyes hold me in a long caress

It was nothing, of course, as we stood there dressed 
In the polite niceties of daily intercourse, 
My throat hoarse for a whisper to be heard
Because, of course, there’s a part of every soul that wants to be deceived and doesn’t mind a line
“I’m fine” works swell for kindling a connection
And so I’ll pretend that we’re connected
Becoming the mark in my own long con

Sometimes a simple “please" or “thank you” can make me feel a part of something bigger 
It’s meager fare, but enough to remember the delight of sparks, without risking fire
So strange is desire: we avoid the thing we want

I heard a sex worker on the radio saying that sex has very little to do with it
It’s about people feeling they have a place, and that they are cared for, 
It’s an emotional connection, she said
I startled inside me as I hurtled down the highway, saying, “It’s fake!”
You can’t pay for such things, after all 

But, them again, some part of the heart knows and doesn’t care that the feeling costs a wad of green 
It just wants someone to stare,
Because that’s how very hungry we are:
Lungs screaming for air 
Ground so bone-thirsty-dry, we lap up water and cry for more

All this I reflected on as I sat in the dentist chair and the breasts of the dental tech brushed against me and I moved away while everything within me thrilled at the rush of a human being, greater than my guilt
I felt the need for blood and skin and understood why people go free-wheeling in violence
Or have a moment where they throw off their mask and go sailing head over heels into the winds of a great fire 
Burning out as a meteor on the sky in the great conflagration of their life
Because, my friends,
We all need to feel alive 

The Poetry Reading

I’d have never thought my neighbor, Mr. Pate, would read poetry
What with his red truck and shotguns and the duck hunting 
But his aged voice quaked as he read Wordsworth and Burns
Shutting a volume at one point, continuing on from memory,
His eyes closed, as his voice rose

I only came to be there in his dusty living room, which smelled of mothballs and alcohol— 
His wife deceased but her memory honored in how neat he kept the place—
Because my mom asked me to stop by on my winter break, and I had enough sense of holiness, upon seeing his collection of poetry and prose, to ask about his favorite poem 
And when invited back, when work was through, how could I say no?

So it was at sunset that I came and we read, like scions of some lost age, wandering blind in digital Babylon
And I knew his words and the poems he chose were a summing up of what was still unsaid within himself 
As he poured himself a rum and coke and his voice broke
And I pursed my lips as we all must in the awkwardness of holiness  

While I did not take his hand, I placed one of my own on his shoulder 
As the night burned down the space between this world and the next
And we could almost smell the other side
On an evening when men, like warriors gathering the dead, 
Stood in the words of poets, looking to the skies, and cried
Before steeling ourselves, once again, for morning light 

The Philosopher’s Commute

At six, I finished the philosopher's book 
By the beach as fishermen bobbed their lines and hooks, some dinner to catch and cook
Some food to find
From the quickly darkening sea

He has it all figured out, does he
From a shining tower, whose lofty shade makes a lovely bower
But he, too, must put his book away at end of day
And close his briefcase, shutting the door with a heave and a sigh
As the moon rides high

Then he folds himself into his car and enters the fray on the freeway, 
As evening breaks the back of day
And brake lights become beacons all the way, saying, "All in fits and starts," my friend 

And at pavement’s end, the truth is: 
None from these harried hordes cares a lick what he has to say
As he goes home, has a drink, and sees on the evening news 
The way people still treat each other
Despite the highest notions 
Of life and love 

He becomes then, once again, one of us, 
An angel felled from above 
The bourbon babbling on the back of his throat
As he floats just above the waves
As he bobs on the water of a great, dark ocean

Chernobyl

I watched a miniseries on Chernobyl
That terrifying tragedy which reminds us that death is many-faced and deathless  
And that, as if this world needed more terrors, it finds new ways to mask its visage, invisible to us as atoms

What I will remember most is the young woman just in harm’s way on the highway, 
Unknowing, when ignorance is no bliss, 
While what rains down is the darkest kiss

She stands beside a broken bike, her beau tugging at the engine, as any of us might in hazy spring heat—
Leaning on a wall, to save her feet 
A cigarette dangling from her fingers
The angle of it the protracted protest 
Of a bored woman not at all enjoying the delays in this impatient world

I imagined, then, what would’ve happened if they found out that radiation was falling all about
I see them scramble in a mad dash through the green spring
To safety
Running if they might to outstrip the wind itself 
To hold onto dear and precious life, catching breath 

All so
They could resume, somewhere, that languorous sighing 
The inhaling of smoke
And the boredom of fixing all the broken things
Arguing beneath a tired headboard 
Waiting for some great thing to happen

Marilyn

When I see photos of Marilyn Monroe, 
And knowing how she flew from this bright world to black and white, and fell below it,
Immortalized 
I guess she must have realized, beneath that smile that will never die, how to disappear inside herself
The new Houdini, ravishingly dressed 
Ever vanished beneath pouted lips and swimsuits picked to accentuate her chest

She could turn off whatever self she was, the girl next door,
And become the thing they all adored
But the continual calculus took some doing— 
Stuffing your soul down always does,
Or pushing it into the sky, as disembodied from her famous body, 
She flies on soft breezes, while Sinatra smiles 
And the Kennedys admire this fair land of opportunity

She surveys from above what she’s become
Norma Jean, far from home
Like Noah’s dove, looking for some space to own

But when all the flesh you squeeze and pinch does nothing to conceal the longing 
Which, untouched, becomes a poison, 
Her body, a prison 
A magnet to hold the gaze of so many unseeing men 
There’s only endless roaming, then 

Unless someone holds you with their eyes, there’s no delight in the most supple arms or hands that ply for desperate permission, imploring you
And you know now that charm’s a liar 
And that the loving look is rare 
Except in a good man who’s willing to high-wire through the air
And wade through the haze of so much unreality, which has come to surround and hound you 
Nor can it be found in the grandstands of admirers who want one thing, but not to unhand you

So the soul grows insane from all the stares that never see 
After all, riches are a blinding thing
And breasts, too, and a face that launched a thousand ships and burned down the topless
towers of unthinking men who, in their conflagration, pulled to sand and ash the very beauty they crowded ‘round
Pulled it down and watched it crash

What follows is no mystery—
When your true self is not the you they want to kiss 
You start slipping from your moorings, you turn to mist
We can’t stomach fantasy when the deep soul demands reality

It’s no wonder (and can be no judgment)
That a pill or bottle becomes the thing you think will save you
When you’ve been bandied about and the lot you sold your soul to build upon comes up short
Leaving us to say “goodbye” and “how sad”, as if we had no part in the plot

We’ll simply remember how her smile made us feel
And seemed to promise sun-drenched fields
As we give thanks for grace and begin looking for some new face
To take her place
And save us 
With dreams of a long and warm embrace

Huntington Gardens

The old man who tends the gardens has such deep regret
I know because of how he holds the hoe and his head and because he would not look at me as I said “hello"
Though my daughter did get him to crack a smile

Some old men are like boats that settle into the ocean’s swell, even if the swell is sorrow, for miles 
And somehow I know that hoeing these rows is his penance (though his sin I’ll never know)
As he earns enough to sit with cold beer on his warm porch and watch the sun go down, before treading back to these demanding plods of dirt, like divas which will sing for you but, should you forsake them, will let themselves go

I do not know if his redemption lies in the simple furrows
But over many seasons they do make a sort of poetry which is sent out into the world like hope
We watch it grow

And I hope he knows
That picking weeds is a way of setting our world right again
And his posture a fixture of faithfulness which shows us all how to be in the work of any good thing
By simply leaning in, again and again, until the end 

This winter is clad in cold colors, gray and brown
And no one will make a startled sound until the rose bushes blush
And we all fawn for the beauty, as the birds sing

I hope then, as the crowds stamp these grounds,
That the sad man will lean his weight on his tall tools and stop and sigh 
And, if he’s lucky, smile, 
Underneath a warm, blue sky 

Even the Gods Are Mortal

There is a moment when the new slugger walks into the clubhouse—
That great god of the diamond
That Adonis on red dirt and grass 
Trumpeted in black and white lines, all over the country
A hero, a divinity, meant to inflame hope and remind us
There is glory left to play for
That whatever fell dead surround us—the carcasses of spring’s fool dreams— 
A summer trade springs hope, and springs eternal

There is a moment—and just a moment, blink and you’ll miss it—
When he quivers inside
Shudders as he never would before a curveball or an inside heater
And he doubts
An ash tree falling like timber inside him

He recovers quickly, give him that
He smiles with a grimace, gripping his bat
And then puts the swagger back on his face
To meet his teammates
Like a jaguar claiming his spots
He adopts what he has become
Larger than life
He just slips that on

And they are all too awed to catch much more of the moment than that
And perhaps, too,
The resplendence of his suit
Which is soon to be replaced by the white robe that is his uniform 
And he a priest of fly balls and long drives 

But one or two, they saw it, breaking through
That look of uncertainty
That human question, living in the heart of gods—do I have a place?
It makes its inexorable way into their midst
A serpent always being born in flame
As smiles and swagger seek to extinguish it 

The Old Gods Who Make It Through

The kind old man who scanned my carbon copied rental agreement and let me loose on the freeway
He might be Hercules, humbled and forgotten, cast down a long chain of shame
And landed here, a broken god, shunned and stumbled from Olympus 

He who now sits with the cap of a local baseball team sitting unbroken on his tired head, 
He who has no sense of style save that which is not-having-time-to-care-what-people- think (and we all shun that freedom until there’s no strength left for slavery)
He is a fading god, fierce and sad 

But I bet in robust youth he played football and walked the halls with a glint in his eyes that made knees quiver
The way he chewed his gum as he took my papers and the twang in his old voice told me
That his power once flowed like spring itself
That he was young and all was pear-ripe before him
And he a vice that never stopped its squeezing 

I’d bet that when he goes home, he does his best to be kind
Feeds some fearful cat that will only sit in his lap, and no one else’s,  
And unwinds alone, drinking and cursing and watching baseball 
Just above the sorrow that is so clearly pushed down inside him
Which he did not know in the days when he loped around town
With no notion of strength’s long day becoming night 
No notion that life would pile on and keep piling on until he cries uncle
(Since we all cry uncle)

He could still pin me at arm wrestling
Flipping the bird to my young years and laughing
The strength bringing back the best memories
Of love and sex and lust and youth 

So our handing off of papers became, for me, a sort of prayer:
May we all be graced in our youth with a long ignorance
And then carry our strength into the fade with a tip of a baseball hat sitting sideways on our white hair, and a nod of the head, and a wry smile that says, “I’m ready”

May we become kind as we prepare to hit the highway 
With some glint in our eye that still remembers, without undue regret, 
The value of time well-spent, and proper sorrow for what we wasted
Before we’re released to the road ahead

Then we will all be very blessed, even as we hold regret
And we will rise like gods through golden halls, having spurned the snare of pride,
Ready to waste no time
Ready to rise and rise and rise 

Mr. Crowzen’s Yard

I never understood why the old man bent down so dutifully above the green
Preening like a crow on the crown of the hill, “Old Man Crowzen’s yard”
Pulling weeds

Sometimes, I guess, he was planting seeds
Then watering with the focus of a sieve 
Always calling forth dense green, incanting some mystery from the earth 

Indeed, he stewed it like a witch’s brew, the blades to hold the dew
Obsessed, he seemed, with that moving stream of water
In his tiny wizard's kingdom
When outside his walls a whole world wasted away for his lack of seducing it
Reducing it, as he did, to a patch of grass

But now, I understand:

If you can make one thing flourish in this strange world
If you can stand and say, I have power, before the sun fades
In this—a little kingdom of green, 
(No matter how small it is, that matters not a thing) 
It stings and stuns the sense we’re fading too fast 
It preserves the words we need to hold in all our unsaid selves

It delays the night with day  
And provides that prize we most covet:
A sense of harmony 

I know this, as I stand in my own yard, watering grass to green it, 
Preening as it lays down and lets me speak to it
Feeling the gentle stream that keeps me here and nowhere else—
Which may be life’s dearest trick
To be here now
And all while calling forth a shade of green
Which is to hold hope close, life’s second trick
Those two tricks the thing
So very close to being king

Night of the Hot Tub

The most hilarious story of my life, I was not there for
But have heard so many times I feel I was standing to the side of it, in dew drenched grass of a summer night so many years ago, when Bill woke up to the hippies in his hot tub

There had been a long fight about the contraption
Barbara lobbying like a lark, Bill calling it “newfangled," or some such phrase he reclaimed from the hackneyed rubbish bin of his day
And Barbara, exulting when, having won, it was installed in their backyard, while Bill just shook his head, slathered herself with sunscreen and slid into it, while Bill spent the week cutting the hedge

And at the end of that short week, to the sound of splashing, Bill rose and strode through the back door and yelled, “By God, what are you doing out here?”
But they were laughing and/or too high and/or drunk to hear or listen
So he went out into his garage and returned with a chainsaw—just for looks
And stepped right up to the tub and yelled, “Well...”

And then every one turned and scrambled like squirrels, naked to the world
Slipping all over the grass like it was buttered, and screaming
And Bill said no further word but walked back to bed
Where Barbara sat sleeping like the fat cat who caught the canary, dreaming of her hot tub

I wish I had been there (girls streaming from the water aside),
To watch the light in his eyes, and to watch him leverage that crotchety gray style
And beneath it, that wonderful, mischievous smile, glad at last that some things
Can at least remain the same and in their proper order
In this, our always newfangled world

To Those Who Make it Through

There were some who got through
I don’t know how but they did, 
Like bombers on air raids slipping through impossible skies
They defied the odds 

This man I have in mind (because I met him, once, in a photograph, 
and have heard his stories)
Lived with a smile which was never plastered on like a lie
Like the miles of billboards down the old highway to his house

He didn’t walk in the door and say, “Gee, Sal, this dinner smells fine”
But he did shine, with an inner sheen of light
He was happy, kind

He rode with Sally, his girl, on back roads
Smiling as he laid his hand on her thighs
And later, as he held her and had her and she had him
There was selflessness that rose up like a rainstorm in the midst of their great love

He would not roam, never strayed—though he had his offers
He never hit his child
Anger yes, but never rage,
Always found some way to release it like a frog that had crawled into his house
Back into the night

And some many years later, wrinkled and wounded but beautifully unscathed,
Burnished and burgeoning all the more for his age
He handed off the gift
Like a little bird cage 

And not an eagle inside it, nor a bird of prey
But a canary, small and frail and innocent
And with a song like the morning lark

He sings an aria through the years
An opera
Its music, still
Filling all our grateful lives

The Duty Free Shop

When we came up from the cave of jetway with its bright lights behind us,
We were given “good days” and “b-byes” as we made our way
Into a different kind of light—not yellow like the sun, but white
And the room tinged with a king of ringing, like a penumbra of sound spilling from the shade,
That said, “All is safe here,” 
A Siren’s song
A serenade

I held all in wonder on my first long trip: all the people passing with such purpose
To great things, from here to there, on long flights
But we were momentarily, my grandmother said, in the den of iniquity
And she shook her head and pursed her lips, checking a price tag over the rim of her thick glasses

But then I saw a star of light cross her face
The confusion, the sense of impendent grace
"That’s half the price,” she said to no one (certainly not to me)
Before, as if kissed by an angel,
She grabbed my hand and guided me to a rack of toy cars and teddy bears
Where I played, as she spent ten minutes rifling through the devil’s things 

And when she bought me chocolate
I saw in her bag the very bottle of devil’s syrup that had raised such flags
As she looked at me with kind eyes and smiled
Before we made our way into the great white city sprawling like angels’ wings beneath our feet

Diner

She hung the saddest sign on the highway:
“Open for business, even on Christmas”

Inside the shoebox diner
She served him coffee,
And a fresh slice of pie— 
Her greatness
The one true excellence of her life
That, and the beauty of her eyes

When he reached out and patted her thigh
She only smiled
“Harmless,” she sighed,
Her chest rising
Against the faded pink creases
Fraying beneath her nametag

An hour later, as the bright Buick bulbs
Lit the gravel like a child’s flashlight,
And then the rock wall, and them the empty blackness of asphalt
There were whispers all along the highway
That burned out, like candles, into silence
As the evening came and went
As the night swept in, thick as fever,
The desert canyons moist with rarest dew
The indigo of fading blue,
With its endless beauty and false strength,
Passing like the angel of death
Into the west
 

From George, on his Deathbed

O, God, I leave this story
And I don’t want to go
And lose this pageantry of sight,
And above all sound
The notes of symphonies
Tightly wound and worn
Like a woman’s wedding gown
And the music of nighttime
And birds at day

The smell of summer, too
And ripened fruit
And honeysuckle root
I weep, but not from fear
Only loss
I want to see the story end
I want to dance its final spin

So help me go
There is another story
I’ve been told, and I know—
beyond those feeble witnesses—
That it is so
And the colors there are brighter
Than a thousand here
And its music will melt me
While I will revel in being wax

Still, I can’t see, if pain is gone,
How joy will stand
Or how a pear will taste as sweet
If fruit won’t rot
Or how a stolen day could be as dear
When theft is made dumb
By endless time

But these mysteries, I leave to you
I’ve learned to trust
I know you will see it through
O, God, into that void I go
Knowing this is not the end

And as I leave her...
This I can’t bear to say
(It rips my heart away)…
Let her know our life was sweeter
Than any autumn scent that drenched me
Any summer spring that quenched me
And though we trust it comes again
This is still the brutal end
And meet for tears and loss

But now, heart and courage
Unknown spring still stands
So let me grieve purely
Not as one who is afraid
But as one who loses
And has the strength to cry
With no pretense nor pretending
ven if this is no end

When I Was Young in the Mountains

Actually, I never lived in the mountains
But the brand’s the thing

I was young, of course, we all were
And startled
By the light of this green world

I lived by meadows, that’s true enough
But you’d hardly call the hill a mount

It was good for sliding down, though
I can still feel the ice freezing my hands

It cut me like a dagger
The winter would rip your skin

And in the cutting
Something was let in:

You knew you were alive then
With blood dripping down

You didn’t know you’d always be chasing
Ever after
Something to make you feel the same way

Something as true as that racing pain
You could stay just one step, one slide, ahead of

If pain’s the tutor of the soul
His truth, at least, is easy to learn:
“This is real,” he says
“This means something and matters”

And if you know that, you can hold all things—
Like water’s held in a bowl—
And then you can let it all go

When I was young in the mountains
I learned all I’d need to know

But it wasn’t long ‘til I moved to the town
And things move on from thing to thing

Worse, people will become things
And if you let that winter happen

Well, there’s no spring behind
Nothing coming to redeem it

And when the singing’s gone,
What’s left?  Just standing in line

Keeping your head down
Running ‘round and ‘round

Trying to get what’s next
Trying to not get ground up

Because that’s life
And what life becomes

But when I was young in the mountains?
I was the king of the land

Hands bleeding, the whole world in front of me
Some pain that said, “Don’t get numb, kid,”
Teaching me

I just didn’t know how numb a pain can be
Couldn’t know such realities

When I was spinning in joy
The winter cracking my lungs open

The pain teaching me that to feel
Is what’s real, even if it’s hell

And then, after that winter
The spring coming with so much sap
The smell of green would take your hand

Make all good and bright inside you
Renewing the land, and you with it

For years now, words have slipped from me
Beneath this longing that can’t be laid in words

To slip from this place
To slip from this, the unreal
Where all is numbed and tame and plain

Back to that hill
That I can slide down
Where I can find again that letting in

That letting go that holds you
And lets you hold it

Your hands frozen
Your soul, unzipped, alive,
Shaken and unshaken

Your heart quaking
For how real it all is
And how much it means
The pain of everything meaning everything
Its sting speaking, being, revealing
Everything

Beneath the Anger, Always Sorrow

In The Perfect Storm, there is a moment when the actors are transfixed metaphors
Staring at a patch of sunset beyond the fray until
Seeing the wave that would push them away from sun, back into the darkest day
George Clooney, bearded, brawny, bruised by life, curses the storm that will not let them go

In your sorrow, my friend, you were such a sailor
Not on film or page but in flesh and blood, looking at the pink horizon of hope beyond the waves
For a moment, your anger abated and there, beyond the black and gray of it, you saw the pain
Touched it, felt the throat-tightening grimace in the underwater vault of it, 
Always kept at bay by the energy you expend wrestling that Leviathan away
Beneath such thick skin

The pink sky ahead was the way out of it
But it will not let you go—the rage—unless you find a way into the pain 

Sad to say, Clooney and those sailors went down with the ship
It’s not much of a metaphor, then, unless you can flip the script
And claw your way to that horizon
Where the sunlight warms and burns you to death
Like the boy covered in dragon scales who became himself again, but
With searing pain—the sloughing off of second skin—
The agony of being lost and found
The strain of being saved
As the ocean always brings its truth to bear:

The path of life is more painful than death
Resurrection far harder than a watery grave 

Good Fruit

There is something gained, of course, in the glad reality that
I can peel and pierce an orange whenever I like (or twice, or thrice)
Can walk or bike to the grocery and engorge on citrus
With fine happy fingers or the expectant knife

But one hundred fifty years ago, a woman walked six miles to town
And waited two hours for a train, late at the gate from a broken beam,
Which finally lumbered and gave out, with a great sigh of steam, 
After a trail too long, a master mean

And from a car she watched, as they hauled though the yard
Mail and bundles and boxes large, and a sack of fruit
Which, ten minutes later, in the general store, she made sure
Was first unpacked and, laying her hands on two—the limit—
She paid bright coins for that good booty, then walked back the six miles
A smile in each step

All to bring her girl a gift, a Magi, a wise woman  
And the girl gaped
As if the skies peeled back and angels sang, at the sight of that orange orb
All on Christmas day

There’s something gained in that story, too,
The beauty of effort, the perfection of simple things
When you still have eyes to see miracles all around you
And the soul’s longing is longer, made more sure by how it finds you
And what it will require of you

There's something lost, too, in how easily I weigh and peel the things
Or throw away the ones which fail to please
Because, after all, life is hard, and it’s often hard because it’s easy
And easy doesn’t please me, or you, or us
With these souls meant for good, hard work
To fill the earth, subdue it,
And bring of our lives sweet, good fruit 

Omar, on the Border

My body can no longer hold my spirit  
It shakes at the smallest lifting
It quakes through the watches of the day

And in the night, when I lie quiet,
Awake
I can’t sit straight, stand, get up

You move your hands, feeding me, shaving me
My chin presses in as my body abandons me
Once again, this morning
This now eternal re-occurring
The never-ending boarding of the flight of myself
Leaving me, as I stand at the window, waving

But my mind still sees so clear and bright and clean
I peer through the curtains, and in-between here and the hills, the highway
With its flashes of sun, reflecting off all the cars and trucks
That run and ride blind to the dumb luck of youth

Quick rivers of light flash into being
Blinding apparitions through these partitions of glass
Promising some world enflamed with the light of the sun
Some world burning on the other side

Subtext

It’s hard, she said, in that way that you say "it’s hard" and almost look away or retreat inside
So that the seam of the bag doesn’t rip and spill its grain all over this nice table
The heart is like a sack, after all, the bottom of which we stuff with the stuff that would keep us from getting up and getting on, one step after another

“It’s hard,” she said, and as she looked away I thought of textbooks or the Bible,
in which we read “and they went to war”
Which means blood and death and rape and the mad frenzy of hate
But,
The black words look so clean and straight on the white page
Sanitized, stripped down to just the glories—Alexander on his podium, say—and the orgies after
The dysentery in the camp forgotten
The boils, the sores, the blisters swept away by the smell of warm ink on pressed paper

Such is the subtext of pain
"It was hard” means, I guess, she almost spun out into the abyss, like a cartoon riding a bike over a cliff
But somehow, just before looking down and falling
She somehow threw the sack of her own heart off the bike and landed here, at this table
Where the water tastes so much like lemon, and the windows keep the rain at bay

The Pilot Comes Down to Earth

When the pilot came back to earth
It was all mirth, for a long moment
A slap on the back, a smile
Cut short by what comes after

The drive back from the tarmac
Hive activity in the hangar
Paperwork

The mundane removing of the flight suit
And the bumpy desert road trip
Back to the base

Where his bosomy wife watched a soap
And told him he was blocking her light
And would he bring her a glass of water

Which he did
Pouring it at the sink
Looking up at another test flight
Which left a long trail of white
Across a perfect sky

The Monologue

I dropped my phone in am Amsterdam toilet
I thought the story would be worth it
You know, I did it on purpose
(By the way, did you know dolphins are the
world’s most intentional animals?
Yeah, they do everything on porpoise)

Get it?
Anyway, yeah, I though it would be worth it
A good story, I mean
I was rushing around trying to catch a flight
And plunk, I dropped it
And I stood there laughing, just
Shaking my head at the absurdity
Rushing around to catch the connection
And I didn’t even enjoy a stroopwaffle
Just like my time in Jerusalem
Not one falafel!

Okay, so I didn’t drop it
But it would have been interesting, right?
I’d come home and tell the story
And there would be this morale beneath it
Like a living parable
Don’t rush around, or you might go crazy

The end
Er…c’est finit?
Oh right, oh right
…And scene

Harold, Going On

I sit where you would sit
By the open window on the porch

Dale, that damned squirrel, gathers acorns
Where you planted gourds
Pays me no mind, still
Which makes me smile

His world has gone on spinning
Somehow the worlds have gone on spinning
As I slip from symphony into silence

I pass through the kitchen, with its Maytag in D Minor
A note stumbling to find footing
Between the Black & Deckers in A and E

I stand now on the porch
Just as the B Flat of the dishwasher, with no ceremony
No baton drop, stops
And makes everything feel of quiet

When something stops, it’s as if everything else,
Even if it goes on, is gone

I sit alone now and hear only the autumn night
Smell lilac
The same night you listened to
With its G sharp of bullfrogs
And its crescendo of crickets

We call this quiet, but it’s not
It’s sound
But then the wind rises up, over the pond
And that feels like the first noise of the night

It sweeps up, unaware of me or the memory of you
As unaware as the moon or the stars or the trees
And it kisses the ground where you once walked
That favorite purple dress swept up by the wind
Of a springtime storm

You puckered your lips and blew a kiss,
Pretending you were Marilyn
Then you laughed as I smiled
And you turned to the woods
Staring into the storm
With its percussive rumbling
Its timpanis sounding some low note that shook your soul
Before the storm became one sound
And swallowed the evening whole

Lamppost

Silver light clangs down the street
After the rain
In the drizzle
Until, at the lamppost
The orange light breaks the night
Radiates warm
And invites
A soul to look up, to the sky
And pupils to stiffen and shrink,
Banishing the starlight
Blackening the silver sliver of moon

It buzzes in its blooming
All unassuming, though it breaks the stillness
The short distances below to peruse
In a calm and steady gaze
Cold, mechanical, quiet
Like the soundless stars

The way it buzzes, before I move on,
The way it’s buzzing still, somewhere
On the cold night
Incognizant, like a bug
Sad and senseless
Nudges me

Not to drown in melancholy
Or go down in droning

It’s been too long since I’ve written you
Tonight I will make the time
To put to words the Things that go beyond them
And see if they can steady me
(And, more dearly, find you)

A rope tossed down this long, dark well
Where, maybe you’re holding, still, the distant end
Standing in some field of moonlight
Or beneath some spot of lamplight
Looking up