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

Your Shining Century

After my wife and I paid our exorbitant entrance into the carriage
We passed at last, in the final arc of clop-clop-clop, the Strawberry Fields,
Adjacent to where John Lennon died
(Or, I was reminded, was killed, by some mad eye)

Which made me think of a trip my dad took to Spain, to study art,
After MLK had died (or, I am reminded, was killed, by some hateful heart)
And a Spaniard said to him, disgusted, “What is wrong with you all?”
You all…you Americanos
You who strike down great men
Your presidents and your prophets
(Though, I am reminded, some great men are simply men who prize great prizes and great-sized aspirations)

Even now, I want to defend my father, which is to say, defend him and me and us
What about your shining century? I would say
Your oppression, your rejection of humanity
Your Guernica, your civil war
How convenient you can only afford such a short memory

But I guess throwing rocks only locks us in their grip
And, after all, the clop-clop-clop of Brian (I think that’s our horse’s name)
Reminds me we all ride on the same field, despite these dividing lines which we call nations,
Which give us places to work out, in our own ways, all this pain

It would be better to say to that Spaniard,
Yes, say a prayer for us
Indeed, what is wrong with us, as I shake a sad head
And maybe he, confused by my refusal to raise arms,
Would nod his head and say, I understand 
What’s wrong with all of us, eh?
He’d prod my arm in solidarity
And we’d sit thinking about what a fine future there is somewhere, off waiting for us
A fine future just waiting to be built

To Be Here Now, in the Great Belly of the Beast

I am listening to a baseball game, one of the more refined pleasures of this lingering American century
And sure, the radio is also a handheld genie with more computing power than the ship that put men on the moon
But
Sitting in Central Park while spring tries to spring, before the sun soaks up the
wet grass and wears shades and smiles (like the suns of 1,001 children’s books),
it is warm enough to enjoy the smell of hot dogs and someone’s fine tobacco
(It may be cheap, but what do I know? And who cares?)

And I become aware of timelessness here
On these leaves upon which so many derrières have sat
The day that Armstrong waddled down the ladder, perhaps, 
Onto that great white orb, now circling with endless speed this green sphere, 
And perhaps ten thousand other days, where souls have sat enjoying the little grattitudes of life, 
Of eating, of smoking, of pushing pain away 

My dad taught me how to sit and do nothing, which is the greatest excellence of a man, and one at which I still struggle lop-sidedly, an artist still at crayons,
But after the final out, while my wife sleeps on a sprawling rock untouched by centuries of metal teeth or the sharp whirr of the bulldozer,
I practice the art of being here
Now
And become aware of my breath
And let my mind wander down its spiral staircase for a waking nap
So that everything can become just sense, 
Of green and sun, of earthy smells
Which makes my soul shudder, at how large this park is, and how small, like squirrels, we are in this great belly of city
And how still, that seems good and right: a sensation of dangling
And how it’s better to have some sense of falling
Than a false sense of being held
Or worse, the addiction of avoidance that is our endless rushing around, 
Trying to be everywhere 

The Cow Turned its Head (So Wait On Life)

Around the bend, while we chased sunlight
I will remember always the last pasture  
Where three cows sat unaware of anything much spectacular in this dark world
Certainly not, by God, the burning down of earth and sky
Like hope collapsing to endless density, cold and quiet

I waved my camera, quick as I could, fixing its fixtures to take in the world, frame and shutters ready
But it would not work, despite the perfection of orange above me, because  
The damn cow closest us was content at eating grass
And there’s nothing sweet about a bovine ass  
(It’s a cheap rhyme, but there, I’ve said it, I couldn’t let it pass) 
In the center of the frame  
And the other two so far turned, were helpless to help me, as the sky turned dark and the seconds burned  

But, 
at the last moment, that cow most close to us—who knows why, God alone— 
Turned its head, sighing or eyeing me, 
I believe he flipped his tail, too, as if to say, “Yeah, I see you" 
And that image of his face made everything else take its place, stand ready, and say “Cheese!”—the sky, the trees, the holy grace  
As not three cow hides but rather three beautiful beasts  
Filled the center of the frame, and one, a perfect quiz upon his face, was an angel to all the rest, as I clicked away 

He, my new friend, quick as cows can move,  
Settled back down to herb and plate, all done
But the sky was through, anyway, as things need to find their boring, brooding pace again

I knew, though, for that moment, that his turning seemed to say, “Be present, wait on life, things will look your way" 
And I could not have loved him more
So grateful for the photo, which sits framed now, on my desk,
And much more for the metaphor  

Driving with My Daughter as Sunset, in a New Place

The sky is a saddle on the horizon
And my daughter is fighting sleep in the back seat as we drive through hills formed so long ago that you just have to ignore how small we are in the expanse of things
That we are kings, rather—now glad explorers newly finding this ring of road,
Blazing trails on pavement

The stars blink on, revealing the void always there, the never-ending night
The ocean we always sail, the sky,
As we chase the purple clouds of sunset,
The orange leather of last light

She is new to this world (give or take four years), pure and perfect
She doesn’t have the words yet, even in waking day,
To say full what she thinks (of course, what year ever grants us that, complete?)
And what she feels is still a churning sea, a geyser, a quiet lake
Always being discovered, sometimes surprising her
All this water in the world, around and in and through us

You can see the look on her face when she has no words
Like tensile hands just learning to touch
Trying to pick a grain of sand from dust

Before the end of this day’s world, and before words,
In the embrace of a hilltop on which we pause, as on a crest of wave,
Before speeding gladly down into the bottom, where the night is formed more fully—
More sure the dark there, and pure
Together, we have no words, just wonder
As the next hill looms before us like a great, breaking wave
Of perfect quiet
 

Rite of Passage in a Small Town

My aunt told me that my cousin, for something fun to do in this small town,
Would ride the square
"What’s that?" I said, as if I were in Rome pointing to a statue
"Ride the square, you know…get in a truck and ride around it" 
Then she laughed, and I was in on the joke 

There are rites of passage which blind the participants
They are drawn inexorably, like the swallows of Capistrano,  
Like those salmon jumping upstream to spawn  
Like me at my high school graduation growing a goatee of eleven hairs, so spare and sparse
I alone, exulting in my strength, was blind to the sad statement I made 

Little birds, you see, do not despise their strength
And we all flex whatever muscles we have 

"So they just ride and…what?" 
"Stare at each other, mostly" 
I nodded

Another rite of passage, saying
"Stare at me and dare me to prove I’m something"
This makes sense to me
With so much mad fear in the world that "I’m nothing,”  
It’s better to punch something and prove you're there
Better to feel pain than insane fear 

Not so bad, this rite of passage in a small town  
And really, pretty much the same as anywhere and everywhere, and anytime
The world one great town square, around which we ride with wary eyes

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

Sometimes Death is Necessary

The celebration feels like birds landing on my open hands
But always flying off
Like trimming a bonsai tree with shears just too small
It’s hard to get my heart around it all

Christmas comes blustery and red
With visions of sugarplums plump in our heads
But a day clothed in pastel?
And we are surrounded by so much spring
That the mystery is almost drowned out by our over-seeing and yet, our not believing that
The day that turns to night will turn to day again 

But then I remember that
We pruned our rose-bushes two months ago
And that became its own Easter
I thought we killed them, but
The holy hush—not three days mind, you—but six, seven weeks
Turned them all to burning bushes
And it was too much metaphor
Life, life on every side, orange and red and white
The resurrection and the life

We are destined to walk, if we will, as he once walked,
In the cool of a garden
Up a long, lonely trail
Into the perfect sacrifice of love which keeps whispering,
“Sometimes death is necessary,
Keep walking, still”

Opening Day

The new year as a new babe is a bit tired
But I do like the idea of an old man facing death well and death that goes up in confetti
So sure, let’s go with tried and true clichés; they’ve paid their dues:

In its young days, being raised right
The year smelled leather, began to shape the form of ball and, most important of all,
Formed the memory to mark its life, the association distilled to one smell—
Leather and cut grass

And if January first was the day of birth, last month the year became mature
Took the car out, got its heart broken underneath the football stands, 
Found itself at a bonfire, making eyes across the smoke,
Tried its first illicit act

The year left home, too, in its rusted car, full of stuff,
To become a scholar, to run the halls of wisdom
Before it runs the bases 

And now, thank God, having tasted heartache,
No heart can come broken to Opening Day,
When hackneyed hope springs eternal
And the year is suddenly reborn
No hearts broken at 0-0
When the smell of leather and cut grass removes all the sting of coming loss

There is, if we are ever lucky and blessed, the joy of union beyond ourselves
With something that transcends our mortal frames
And what great irony: we transcend within them, in their prowess and their power
In this, the best work, of filling the earth and subduing it, on perfect grass
And white lines running towards the bliss beyond

With popcorn, with peanuts, with dumb smiles
Which is to say, with hope
On opening day 

The Place Where God Already Is

"Listen to the rain, we have so few nights to enjoy rain,”
I said, lying in bed with my wife, having read a book about how Christianity is subversive,
and that we should use cloth diapers on our babies and shop only at co-ops
And maybe this is true, or some of it, 
But I had no energy for the imagination of it
Not even guilt, just too tired to try anything but listening to the rain
When my wife said, 
“You know what I pray when I dance?”
All my thoughts hid from her, “No,” I said. “What?”
“Lord, give me this dance. Give me this one dance.”
I squeezed her leg, because it made sense to me
Somehow, the mystery is: 
All we do is enter into the place where God already is
the dance, the rain, the tired bed

No Poems Today I, II, III

No Poems Today I

I have no poem in me today

I’m aware it’s either ironic or lying that I’m writing
But sometimes the soul just needs to say, "I’ve got nothing,"
And learn that it’s okay

The sun will come up again tomorrow
And lean into us with rays, like words, that warm
To help us realize, it’s never much about us, anyway
Just the dance of light jumping between every living being
And, come to it, every rock and dust and slumbered thing
Which still write a few words, in their quiet, and throws them, like paper into flames,
Into the dance of fire
Where what’s burned, crossing through, is refined, reproved, renewed
And stands there, across the river, a fully formed Phoenix
In the world to come

No Poems Today II

I guess the fear is we know someday, it won’t
The sun, I mean—come up and all that

But for now, my friend has left town, and my birthday's gone,
And I spent so much energy running around, my soul has pooped out and said, “enough”
Like a jalopy on route 66
We are like circles which, running into happiness, running into sorrow, grow tired and
have to sit once again before the great silence

But then, "Don’t try to wring from me any words," my soul said,
Your brain will judge them all as trite, if you try
And you know the drill:  
You’ll think what you find is never true, that your young energy just deceives you

I don’t have a poem in me, though they remain all around,
I must simply sit and say, "the waves come in, the waves come out
Let’s hope a new tide rolls about"
(See, that rhymed
...I tried)

No Poems Today III

A good substitute for truth is rhythm and a line in time and two words
That stare at each other, from across a line
But this moment won’t yield to cheap tricks

After all, I had a moment which now I can’t remember
Can’t recall with rhymes, like a magician calling a hidden card forth,
But it was poetry

If I can just find and pull the string of it, like a line of hankies from my sleeve,
I could write a poem
But all I can remember is, it was something about how you laughed and smiled
And shook your head while you read your book, a world being born inside your brain,
And me standing in the doorway, an unseen shadow, shaking my head and smiling in my turn
A world turning, like a kaleidoscope, inside me 

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
Even 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

On the Grabbing of the Check

I was startled and started at the slamming palm of the gentleman—
Well given the context, perhaps I should just say man—
As he grabbed the check, and his friend said, “Damn,” and smiled
The friend’s cup still settling, disheveled by the tremor of the man's masculinity
His chest pushed out just an inch further now, beneath his grin
His virility in hand, not a carcass brought back to camp,
But a piece of paper, which still signifies some strength 

The Maori, to show their virility, dance the kapa haka
Pounding the ground with such fierce testosterone
The frenzy of energy is a behemoth charging through all the channels of heart,
So desperate, like all of us, to put this power and prowess somewhere
To stand beneath the bright stars and defy our dusty lot
And the awful incongruity of so much longing and so much strength
Destined for a long, slow fade
Which, in our youth, it always seems, we can outrun, or outplay 

I thought, too, sitting across from my friend, above my Eggs Benedict,
Of the Masai drinking milk and cow’s blood and alcohol, before dancing and being circumcised
And later, on my computer, I discovered Vanuatu land diving
And all the ways to prove that we are men

But first, I sat across from another,
At about the distance of Doc and Wyatt at the O.K. Corral
As the nice waitress with the plastered smile said, “Anything else?”
And we said no, wondering who was more the warrior, and who was fastest on the draw 

Now A Car Hurtles Through Space

What about this car in space thing? 
My wife said to me as I read poetry and we both procrastinated on putting our minds to sleep
And it’s true, I guess: a billionaire put a car into space, heading to Mars with a mannequin clutching at the wheel, hell-bent upon the deep
No shotgun rider needed, either, the great vacuum enough protection for the race 

Oh yes, I heard about that, I said, intent on figuring out what on earth this poem is about
Though, somewhere above me, an electric car is hurtling through the atoms, 
And in Tokyo, a man is slamming down his empty whiskey glass, trying to drown out how very insensible all this desire is, burning under cold, unseeing stars which, it really seems, should see and do something about it 

His palm slamming down is like the ignition of a rocket, which sends a payload into space
Then an unmanned car becomes a jester’s grin, sailing above the world
And two fingers, metaphorically lifting from the wheel, flip two birds into the void 

I sense all this, inchoately, with words that will only come later, as I am sitting trying to figure out what on earth this poem is about
But for the moment, I lay next to a beautiful woman, with no energy even to do what comes naturally
Energy only to take all this in stride, and marvel that there is no strength to be amazed
After all, after a while you realize, there are miracles everywhere
And we are kids at a zoo who, by sunset, have seen enough, for there will be more miracles tomorrow
Like the perfect comfort of this cold pillow, and cold hands on a warm back, 
As we all hurtle through empty space 

A Spider in the Shower

I did not see the spider in the shower until I turned and faced the wall
I saw him, then, scrambling up the tile, like waiting for a shoe to fall

He was a doomed bystander,
A pedestrian running from the wave, in some midnight B-movie disaster, screaming without a sound
A step ahead of the steam and heat, on gangly feet

He was a thin thing, too, and awkward
Running on such spindly legs, he betrayed physics, like a cartoon whose scampering feet never touch the ground

Not a Daddy Long Legs, but hopefully carrying some such silly name,
(Or a scientist somewhere should be hanged)
Not, to the point, one of those inky, hairy, thickened things, with mandibles to maim
Which, I confess, have made me scream
(A man-like scream, but nonetheless a scream)

And so I had pity, thinking what a miracle he is
And all these creatures beneath our feet
And this one, finding a corner of the shower to hole up and hide in
Praying Godzilla will pass him by

A decent rendering of ourselves, in scale, come to it
Ourselves in point, just one step ahead—
Always scrambling from some wave, some heat, some steam
Wondering about the great giant of pain, crashing dumbly about us, singing a stupid song
As we scramble for some safe place
To rest our weary feet

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 

Hard Candy

I bought six boxes of my favorite candies—
Hard coffee toffee that tastes like Christmas and childhood
Figuring that their presence,
There in the basket by the pantry,
Would fancy my delight after each hard daylight

Men used to come home and curse Kennedy or Nixon and pour a Scotch
It’s something close to that
To take the edge off|
But they just sat there, untouched
As calendar pages dropped one by one in a long film noir montage, through the seasons

When I came back to them, they had soured, gone soft
And I ended up trying to freeze them back to life before throwing them out
All rubbish

Then, at Christmas,
My sweet wife got me a small package of the same, nestled into the toe-nook of my stocking
And like a Phoenix rising,
They tasted, one by one, like bliss incarnate, bedeviling senses
A bite-sized shell of soul-song

I don’t know what it all means, but I’m quite sure there’s a parable or a poem somewhere inside this story, like a soft caramel center

Storehouses don’t always please the soul
It’s not the having, it’s the letting go
Delight is a dish best served slow