Category: Poetry

We’d’ve come stumbling from our beds,
your boys, half naked and shivering
to brave that slick steep stair in stocking feet
knowing you waited below
by that folding metal ironing board
with its worn silver-cloth cover,
the padding torn, the surface scorched
in places, blackened, burned through.
For each of us it was the same:
that humid gasp and sigh
as the iron was turned upright
weight of it placed in precarious balance;
you’d hand us the scalded grey flannel trousers
we were to wear that day
and each knew that pleasure as his own:
the warm cloth on cool skin—
each received this sensual gift
no matter his history.
There was no sin particular
to any one or the other of us.

stars in daylight
it’s not  they’re gone

voices still softly speaking
amid the blind noise

just as stones move underfoot
slow flotsam at forever’s depth

time’s echoing increment

the one idea of your life almost realized
the mountain crests like a breaking wave

—shadow cast upon itself
does not find more darkness.

O— how I wish I was making more sense.
There’re stories we live not reading

them or ever knowing
they exist.

She asked me, ‘Who’s that singer —you know the one
—that singer who isn’t Lou Gehrig—not him—
who was that singer who —wasn’t— Lou Gehrig?’

All of them, I answered
as I don’t believe the ballplayer ever sang.

If instead it described rain
fallen on dark soil, one pale flower
where no one would believe a seed had ever fallen
—where granite clasts —broken through
—showed so slightly proud

and if this fiction weren’t actually
about forgetting or ignoring,  but rather
about finding —just the one tender fact

—that stone awash in a turbulent stream
—to take it up, only to weigh it in your hand.

Ask again
for that morning,
the sun not risen yet,

the radio on the counter
drones and whines and squeals
seeking signal.

Look out the kitchen window,
past the sink, still with its last-night dishes,
across the misty yard

to that thin strand of woods
then the grassy playing field just beyond.

The static calms now, noise becomes music.
Ray Charles sings
       of—Grace —Brotherhood
                 —America, America
about loving —mercy more than life.

Naked from the waist, my father,
readied for his morning shave,
leaves hot water running in the basin,

steps from the hall bathroom
to join me in the moment’s majesty,
looking out, watching that still lightless field
—everyone else in the house so safely sleeping.

As Heron appeared it was already leaving.
Maybe I am the one that scared it from its place
in among the river birch and undergrowth, the banks
this side of the river.

Maybe I can look at what I once wrote thinking you
—always thinking you— would read it.

I told a friend about this hollow feeling,
feeling like the residue left inside a lost wax mold.
Something about about fire, about wanting to be burned away.

The day your father was born, one thousand miles away,
his grandfather walked out into the woods behind his house
and cut a small dogwood branch with the perfect y-shaped fork

for a slingshot. He would use rubber laboratory tubing
for bands, an old leather scrap for the pocket.
Like with anything and everything he’s ever made

by hand, your great-grandfather took his time
on each detail—where leather fastened to the bands,
and each band to the wood. I can see him now,

when the notion first came to him, setting off
with his work gloves and a pruning shears, already
one particular branch in mind for the project.

It was Christmas when that slingshot arrived in a box
of other presents sent for the newborn’s first holiday. It wasn’t
wrapped like the other things. There was just a yellow post-it note
with your father’s name written in your great grandfather’s hand.

I hear her stir the small jar
of paint she’s mixed and know
she’s found the quiet needed to work.

Snow hasn’t yet fallen this winter.
I pick at this.

That poem about the green tomato
was supposed to be the new start
I’d promised myself, to step away from the dark.

That poem about the green tomato
was supposed to change things,
loose my loving tongue on its voluptuous
surface—simple music—

That day

That day the river will be full again
—an ample cup to sip.
We’ll watch the heron make his careful way
along the banks
like he’s looking for a coin that fell from his pocket.
I will have perfected my prayers
and ask for nothing.