After Nineteen Years

 

 

After Nineteen Years

  

Our odometer begins to shine

like an emerald, proclaiming

we’ve been traveling all our lives.

 

                                           D. Nurske

                                           Riding West with Laura

 

 

This year the gifts will be

a clean house top to bottom

the laundry picked up

from the bathroom floor

 

a lit candle for the souls

who go and who have gone on

living or dead

without us.  And of all the small

 

things they’ve left behind,

their breathing is what I miss

most of all, how it was done

right beside us, living

 

a life.  I think or I’d like

to think (because I have

my doubts about some)

they’d be pleased at what

 

we’ve become, how we’ve

kept up on

the house and kept the kids

for the most part

 

happy as we could

make them.  We spared

the rod.  I’m glad.  I never

thought it could

 

happen.  I’m happy

it did. I’m happy it still

does.  And too, all those small repairs

along our way and if not

 

repairs, replacements: a new

fridge, roof, floor.  And those

tiles caught in their own pause

in a box, stacked 

 

and waiting to be flattened

in a pattern we don’t mind

looking at as we sit or stand

or gaze off into if the window

 

is dark.  Today, I sopped up

the trapped water under

the heat exchanger in the dryer.

Happy Anniversaries are these,

 

right?  My tiny hands on

confidence duty, assured

and humble enough to rub

or crush whatever needs to be

 

rubbed or crushed.  Taken in

or taken out. Like laundry,

I suppose.  Those whites,

the ones tumbling in the main-

 

tained dryer.  Remember when

I washed the black ink pen

in them, and now everything has

a particular age of grey

 

I don’t think they talked about

in those books, though I can’t be

sure.  Now, when they come out

of the dryer, they’ll show

 

there’s still some use in something

a little past its prime.  They can

lead a private life of wiping up

after a wash.  Clean.  Fresh. Tide

 

coming in, going out.  It might not

seem so, but everything I do,

even this, is with you.  Shouldered

and leveled, solo or

 

with the warmth of your body

close to mine.  Darkness or day.

Tumbled or just stilling, warm

and clean against our skins.

Some Accumulated Treasures of a Life

 

Some Accumulated Treasures of a Life

 

the children we were

              are omnipresent

 

I’m sorry to tell you but you can’t hear

the ocean in a clamshell, at least

not the clamshells I’ve known, dull,

flat, enough to only give tiny details of

news about what world's stuck inside:

a sealed sea alive in a belly, a neck,

and rough bearded fibers we’d take

off after we steamed them in

their own very homes.  On the outside,

the whole thing looks like the lock

you want to break, and the inside,

the use you need of it:

 

chef?     sumptuous in wine and linguine

              all steam, initially

 

digger? money, potentially, beneath  

each hole, theirs, yours, peck after peck        

me?       spooning open those airholes

              my only bounty saltwater

 

They were always so small by the time

I got to them, the shells I grew up with:

some flat and dull, some mother-

of pearl, some opalescent: mussels, clams,

scallops.  Halfs of themselves.  Ravished.

Nothing like the conchs, the whelks,

the angel wings from the Gulf.  A nautilus?  Never. 

Unless you count 

the unreachable shelf, bounty brought

back after ages away.  I always dug alone.

 

Still, there were others, of course.  Small

periwinkles stuck under the living bladdewrack

sucking on the rocks, the water, the microscopic

Once, a whole sea snail shell, empty, I held

up to my ear and had to push it almost

inside entirely.  Shh.

I waited for the news of her world.  Instead,

the gulls rioted in mock murmuration, ravenous

for the lobster boat going by, the guy

on the stern tossing off old bait. 

In the wheelhouse, my father throttled and laid

off the throttle, and, spying me

onshore, a spec-like grit under the lip

of flesh, spit and rubbed his teeth

with his tongue.  I saw a ring

of gold around his boat but the birds

soon took to moving on to their own

wandering.  I was so close I could’ve

swum up to him and then aboard,

wet and entirely penetrated

with the cold ocean.  I wanted to,

 

some of me, wanted to unpocket

all the shells, empty as they were, back

to bottom, back to being moved

this way, that way by the tide.  Flood or ebb.

It didn’t matter.  What mattered was

they’d all be crushed, being held

or smashed against the shore like that,

or the boat bottom, or the trap

of the dragging gear…whatever’s underneath,

whatever we can’t see or breathe in,

whatever we can’t imagine another creature

even needing, clams, scallops, whore’s

eggs, or maybe that naked crab

I saw just before the boat came in,

too big for all that was previous of it,

too small for what it currently was:

hear it? opportunity knocking, ears

hands reaching into the steam,

recklessly selecting.

An Offering for Goslings

An Offering for Goslings

Consider their plight in the sky

    and the height of the night

        descending and how right

now at this quiet idyl

    it might be enough like this

        to pry you out

of your winter: they cry from

    the cells of themselves, send

        their sound out into that scrim

of cloud and then fly right

    through their somehow guided

        and requite call.  What is

it like to glide into your own

    calling?  Can you (have you ever

        wondered?) feel it in 

your scalp first your cheeks then

    and deeper beneath the skin

        into the mantle

where it all began?  And then

    fly on and on and on into it

        while the multiplying are still

and quiet beneath the skull,

        spiraling into the yolk and 

            albumen and finally (some bit

of them) calcified: the delicate

    wet and then wind-dried

        shellac-like shell incubated

in the tall grasses.  And hearing with-

    in them all those other calls: mother-

        hums maybe, moved into inside

and still ever into the goose-

    children who will, once raised and having out-

        witted fox and ermine and otter-

call out in the same way

    through the same but intimately

        plied, year-long wide sky.  Alive.    

   

bending

 

Bending 

 

 

That time you rose with bubbles

in your blood but didn’t know it

didn’t feel the honest

to goodness pressure

you were under and really who

can in the beginning it doesn’t change

much initially. I want to ask

how fast do you have

to draw up from the bottom to have

gas make the improper advances

like touching a tittie lightly almost

unnoticed until something goes pop



and you come to in a steel can

doors screwed shut and the hiss

(is there a hiss I imagine there’s a hiss)

of sweet air on damage control inhale

inhale let every lungful saturate

and send out battalions to prey

on the renegades and make them

docile as a rabid dog just shot but not

gone yet not gone mad but just

resting before the rage has fled



and what's promised is relief sweet

relief at being so loved in such a way

as to be delivered finally and forever

from it all.



When they open the chamber door

they’ll tell you the man you almost

murdered your best friend and fellow

will live and you don't know

what to say to that only now you

stumble, bum a smoke or try to

and let the men who saved you

from going under for real

and for good say naw, not just yet

pal, just keep breathing, in

and out, easy, no need speeding

just getting to the top slow

as she goes. There's air. Don't panic.

Maybe the Greatest Praise Is Paying Attention

 

Going Out

Maybe the Greatest Praise
              Is Paying Attention to Cliches
 
the way my saying ‘you’re an old man
at 53' makes perfect sense 

and you say: ‘maybe you need 

to shut your yap' and I don't say

that back because you're licking

an old sore, you 

always have been, or ever 
since your father dropped dead
 
you were ten then and the train
with his remains left the station
 
without you.  what is it you’re up to
now all these years building
 
your bridges and then taking them
apart, sometimes plank by plank
 
sometimes in your murderous fury
each and neither predictable?  still
 
all those raw and live wires exposed
and no one knows coming or going
 
if they’ve touched you
off.  for the moment and for the sake
 
of this argument, I imagine you’re making do  
with a day’s worth of coffee and smokes
 
to go to the dock where you
open and close the hull of your boat
 
and the mouth and nose of your long-
dead pops.  don't ask me how i know

you do that or what it even means

but i bet it has to do with blood 

and the word of god and the faith you keep

when you set the boat to floating

and you don’t know if it will

(because all these years it's been sitting

in a shed's fink truss and i want to ask

you if i ever told you how apropos

that sounded, how we were all disposed

to tell those elaborate lies, keeping 

the truths absolutely untalked about but now 

i'm guessing

it's another conversation, right? ok

back to that drawing board) i left you at

the dock, i watch it float and keep on 

floating until you haul the rope in and take to

the deck and wheelhouse and put to go out 

looking for blowholes: porpoises

or right whales or a bob of seals.  out
and out and out and by jesus the boat holds
 

and your boot soles keep out the cold

between the bilge in the fiberglass skin 

and that unforgiving ocean you float in

(i'm kidding) on top of.  you’re not friends, 

you and the sea, but maybe you two have come

to an understanding and made a mature  

agreement: keep each crack
and leak within eyes and fingers
 
reach.  if you see it begin to seep and then tend it
immediately or make your peace

while the water seeps, maybe you'll be 

atoned though I hope not be

-cause like a teased and eager boy, 

once you’ve unzipped him...

remember?

well, you know how that old
story goes, don't you. still,
 
maybe today’s the day you’ll go to
bottom and won't be raised.  or maybe today’s
 
like yesterday: you’ll make it back
again with an empty pack of smokes

and between you and your coat something 

will be beaten against the dry deck of your bones

that makes a shape that can't be contained

or even (though you'll gurgle it) be named.  

overcast/ wind ssw 7 mph

 

overcast/ wind ssw 7 mph 

 

Waiting for the moon to eclipse, 

I stood beside the dying

lilacs.  For days, all season 

really, they've needed rain.  and maybe,

 

because they’re lilacs, (and aren't

lilacs, clumped up with their

perfume, flush with all that

fragrance) they spend themselves

like day drunks, all rounds

on them.  the breeze is nearly too

sweet and between the three trees

I stand in the easy dust of it.

But I see nothing at all

of the moon and her predictable, almost 

solstice eclipse.  I can reach

of course into the places I believe

the moon is supposed to be, judging

from where I saw it rise yesterday 

and then where she was descending.  Today,

though, seeing has to be this: a nose

dependence.  It is shriveling 

blossoms on the draught of the over-

cast’s breath.  It is drought-dry and still

getting on and going on

and going by just like they have been 

doing in this grove all their lives 

beneath skies that lately make pretend rain

far, far off, and mock

 

the solid hill the lilac has built

itself into, root by root and through

and through.  And though

they are not on view, who

 

can’t imagine the penetrated, 

(it is still spring remember) the deciduous 

limn of their twig tips or their 

limbs, these cartographers 

 

of all kinds of dark, scribes

that scroll and and write 

while the heat of the sun-

rise stokes the undercoals yet

undistinguished from the night?  

 

 

Is This a Definition of Mercy?

 

"Is this a definition 

of mercy?" she asked.

"Yes." he said.  "This

is a definition of mercy."

  

 

…Their ships have drifted away

They are stars, and snowflakes floating down

Into your hands, love.

                                           James Wright

                                           A Way to Make a Living

 

It’s too cloudy to make a view

of the moon worth searching for.

In a few hours, a flower is supposed

to pass over the shadow

or through the shadow, brief

where we plant our feet, briefly.  Maybe

 

by the time the eclipse is going

to start, the wind

will have blown enough of the puff

and rumple off and at least

one of us will see how the moon seems

to lean into darkness like a cheek easing

 

into a hand that’s on its way

down into it all once more, once, once more.

A hand that’s been around the world

and back

a hand that’s on its way

out into it all once more

but for this moment and for the full

 

duration of this moment will stay:

it will soothe and be soothed, cupped

into clouddark and then, pulling the shadow

with it, move slow,

deliberate as a magician, off stage

and away.