like blue whales in the spit-
colored sand.
you can’t walk ten feet
without
having to crawl over something.
skate eggs
shrivel in gray
sunlight. slithers of sea lettuce rot.
the meaning
of the world is in plain sight.
crabs line up
to turn themselves in. three hots
and a cot would do fine.
redfish belch
and puke up supper. the fix
is in—everybody
knows this.
we’re beyond catastrophe
says the cod.
you could go on forever, but why bother.
Official Document
I was broke for a decade,
hummed, startled relatives with supposedly
official requests
for relief, cozened, elaborated
in company
on zany forecourts, the blaring sun
mashing the heart out
like a stogie, ran a small concession
selling popcorn
and ginger snaps, the waste
all around us I said
my mind
wandering to the greenish bend
in a sump stream
and supple, equivocating light,
the most dangerous
not so bad after all, I suctioned up
bits of spiritual
nonsense, pressed
complications, and listened to an old man
lie about his life,
a wry, intemperate sensation
overtaking us both.
SHORE LEAVE
Rush Shoes and Escapes
in the book about trees
a few
urban
derelicts buckthorn
ailanthus
the dependable honey
locust are all
I think about
some days the rain of blossoms
in summer
you get the picture
about the universe needing
plenty
of space the rapid thoughts
of an unarmed
man
the spot near the old water wheel
a day so cumbersome
it can’t be raised
on the telephone the moment
you come back
to yourself as if from the stars
Still, Life
hydrangeas drained of color the forwarded rectitude of last roses
brained by fall the comfortless moment when the dog
stands staring at the silence trapped in a syringa bush we get so
we are almost free of elegance or a sense of the lostness
of everything the wild scramble held tightly by force the planet
turning rust red you can smell us all the way into space
the boys vomiting into buckets the girls unwrapping toiletries
we place ourselves in line with the sun the ancient cries drifting
across the lake at dusk must mean something but we don’t know what
Stroke
In the latest web of branches,
cuddled and
softened by a clandestine wind, before a sky clotted
and gauged and calling home to mama
who’s dead, the taste of oranges in your mouth,
a moment when you stand
helpless before all you know about
yourself, a soft voice speaks. Shake that back end, buddy.
Meanwhile the tiny propellers of antique
aircraft turn. You smell the bony
dust in
the prairie grass. Sometimes your favorite
color changes
to aqua. Everything’s
collapsible, the guy next to you on the subway
platform says. You’re up
for the Simple Simon
part, a precision
unknown in your circle. Galvanized
washtubs stacked in front of the funeral home. Parts, a woman sez.
A child at the curb works out his route
to fortune.
The cities at the corners of the map
are beginning to droop.
We remember how funny that was
the first time.
Wyoming
trees backed off
from basic training, stumped bracken, little to report
from arterial trenches
landslides in the next county
water sources
that need looking after
old men oil their weapons
then lose track of what they had in mind
it’s all right
most days I look at the same calendar
scene of purposeful forgetting
local incidents of disrepute
hard fists of balled grass
remnants of great disputes among the cottonwoods
the underrated collections
of deertongue and switchgrass
nothing here
built for comfort
old cultures dribbled out to gray dreams
at dawn and fogs reeking of tar.
Shop Blues
pigeon-eating
hawks green mire the dead
retriever dumped
in the public
trash
can
the desolation of a wild night
of storms
the softening of
the brain
after too much
worry you
said we are the ancients
wandering empty halls
the shattered
brilliants and costly receipts we pass
between
us no help—tiny island chains
of faith
swamped—a small bucket of leftover
shrimp
attracts rats
leptospirosis
lymphocytic choriomeningitis
plague
dropping one tall gent
another testy blonde with a lisp
four sales personnel
in their tracks
RAISE THE DEAD
Bolt Upright
home from work my father
would throw himself face down writhing
on the old couch as if he was smothering a fire
his body raw
from the chemicals at the plant
his wrists revealing the cords he was stretched by
that pulled him into
jaundiced shapes
and left him spinning in fumes
the disaster of his life that he endured
without mentioning
it even to my mother who
fixed elaborate suppers from a book she found
at the library
and never returned
at the table they would hunch shamefaced
over their food
like the early primates
who knew nothing of the world
outside the woods
no sense of broadway or of rooms filled
with paintings scattering the beauty of life before them
not even a religion
or a hope only us children
they lifted their battered heads
and stared at as if
we were creatures just called back from the dead
that they did not remember.
Belfast
I woke up still trying to understand things
and something about the moist smells of early morning
the collapsible flowers
pretending everything’s all right
really got to me as if I was a monk standing in a dry river bed
trying to recall what the world was like
before he left it, and I drove to the supermarket
and got a bucket of chicken and thought about Rachel
who’s prob
ably driving home from work now
in Belfast, maybe talking as she drives to the handsome detective
she’s dating, and sometimes I think of lakes, clear and taut
after the wind dies, of how voices travel far over them
unhindered at dusk no matter what you are saying.
Counting on My Fingers
snow day for the soul she says
and pulls out her list of plants that thrive in winter
hemlock pines firs
shimmying in sunlight evergreen
live oaks ilex
laurel and camellias boxwood holly
the stiff drapes
of mahonia represented
as colorful on snowy days when trains
suburban tracks and old men
press their faces
against loved ones like representatives
of a culture
that could kill you easily juniper
and daphne she says aucuba the streaked stiff leaves
of moonshadow
hemlock cedar on the path
down to the beach where a girl was murdered
ceanothus hoarding blue
puffballs pyracantha
thorn putting out the eye of a child
everywhere you
look something bearing down arbutus
bottlebrush rhododendron
once in the mountains viburnum we slept under
she says and I remember that time
like a rent in my heart
Minor Fabrications
sometimes I wish
I was a professional scooter or braiser or concrete analyzer
of fragmented evenings
in the moonlight, a caster of lines
maybe
sailer of paper plates
poker of holes
or one whose hands have massaged a heart
or two
calling come on, baby, give,
or something
like that. you can walk around on this earth
carrying a watermelon
or a proviso
detailing the mysteries of the cosmos,
but it’s best
to have some professional
experience on your record, a slip
of paper
that says so, and memories
like the taste
of muscadines and mashed potato
sandwiches late at night
in a diner off the highway,
where just now
the cook lies slumped at the coatrack
shot through the heart
by love. nobody wants to be left out
or controlled by vacuous
malingerers
or managers of rerun houses where the stars
try to prepare us
for the worst. even at dam sites
and trails
in reticulated woods after dark
someone is calling for a pro. let us
pick up our instruments
and go. with only a little training
it could be you,
maybe me, handling the stroke, the delve.
THE OTHER LIFE
Close Work
robins show up
not even slightly flabbergasted,
not even
winded, robust no
nonsense characters dispersing from rough gangs,
not wasting time, their bloodstained vests
swollen with tides
of memory.
soon enough we get used
to them. they check into
farm plots and take up space in tiny urban
gardens and scatter into the trees,
go after grubs
and meaty worms unwound
from knots exposed by rain’s
housework. scanty violets’
blue buttons
tucked among leaves under the oaks,
a few, over there a clump of crocuses
nodding off.
redbuds, plum trees
in white shawls, green dots
in the elms. gestures and surly approaches,
the yards overrun.
how many times
has this happened. how many
more links
in a silver bracelet dropped in the grass.
Unattainable Goodness
What is it I belong to and find like crushed mint on my shoes,
the stepped rocks presented like a change of heart
that speaks to me as if we are of the same brotherhood,
the casual significance of a bird passing over this field, the way the painter,
with a flick of the brush, made me stop to think first of my father,
then of dying, and how then I was a small boy again,
afraid to make a mistake and alert all the time like the French in Indochina
—what is it I belong to like a residual effect, a remark
dropped handily into the conversation to prove love still exists,
the way—as we went on—the congressman couldn’t come up
with an example (that satisfied us) of the soul on lend-lease,
or, in the high valley, how we liked to stay up late, reading the old books
Mother used to keep in the kitchen, until finally Father would come out,
a look in his eyes of a wintering sadness, and tell us to go to bed.
The wind places one hand
on another and breaks off what it was doing to tell a little story
about the interplay of confusion
and solace. I awoke late
and never really made it out of bed.
The usefulness of my preparations
scattered like cicada hulls. I can hear water dripping
behind the walls. The uselessness, did I say that,
of an essential readiness
that prepares us for nothing. I woke up late
and stayed in bed.
The brave orations I wrote,
or was it the numbness I discovered lying
close by, these factors
I never mentioned, or was it the latent
suggestibility I pulled out
like a lariat coiled like a snake,
the sense of shelter, or was it shelter
itself playing along with the last fine phrasing?
It got late early that day.
The water ran out
and we couldn’t flush the toilet.
You used to come to the door smiling
so I thought I was in heaven. But this lasted
only a moment. After that,
you said, the bird escaped,
the cabinet broke,
you were dog tired, and hated how we lived.
Clarinet, Sax
split off without a reg sheet
or looseleaf
binder extolling the genuinely terrifying
next moment
I case the house where last night
my two sons and I got into a drunken
fight that sent my
youngest boy to the hospital.
my wife’s
already filed for divorce and now
I have to get a room
somewhere else. fine, I say,
that’s my style anyway. the trees are enormously
preposterous gold
plumes that hurt the eye
to look at. the mountains, like
soft silk rolled between your fingers,
hang
in a distance
impossible to cross. I take a swim in the Jimpsons’
pool. the water is icy,
jams my breath
into my gut and smells of petroleum.
I’m still a cut above. the limits of possibility
are stacked with the luggage.
I eat a bowl of stew and vomit
it up. my calculations
; are awry. sensations
of a clumsy merriment, broken
wind instruments, lie in the grass.
PORTABLE BOATS
One
Some you approach through the woods carrying cakes
Some you sneak up on as if they are orphans
bandaging the wings of birds
Some you refer to as inconspicuous even though you see them everywhere
Some you place inside your hat and walk around with all day
as if you are balancing an egg on your head
Some you discover living in the Denver Y
Some you convert to a useless piece of dialogue
Some you fitfully oppose
Some you apply to meekly explaining yourself
in freakish and ill-favored French
Some you travel to far countries with
Some you misplace
Some you pick the under feathers off of and murmur to fondly
Some you obviously compare to a vanished wilderness
Some you watch dwindle in the rear view mirror
Some you place on the windowsill
Some you embrace without passion
Some you speak to in barrooms and art galleries
referring to yourself as fraudulent and unfathomable
Some you dispense with lightly
Some you divert into other professions
Some you understand as disguised by moonlight
Some you prepare for a better life
Some you poke
Some you unnerve while dreaming of hotels by the sea
Some you righteously anger
Some you offer pastries to
and lose sight of frequently
Some you heckle and deride
Some you take casually to your bosom
Some you compare to mice living in granaries
Some you watch from the corner of your eye
Some you badger and push to great acts
Some you dispense with
Some you teach a short solo
Some you love
Some you don’t know what to do with
Some you clearly can’t speak to without blushing
Some you disturb