Day for years to make a world
Transparent in me and my mind at home
And as I swallowed parts of another world
This one wheeled about me like a veritable
California
THE REDS' LAMENT
They never got it right
not any of them not ever
never on Earth by definition
nor hardly ever on Mars itself
the way it was back in the beginning
the way it was before we changed it
The way the sky went red at dawn
the way it felt to wake under the sun
light in the self rock under boot
.38 g even in our dreams
and in our hopes for our children
The way the way always came clear
even in the worst of the gimcrack chaos
Ariadne's thread appearing or not
in the peripheral moment lost
lost then found and walking on
a sidewalk through the shattered land
The way so much of it had to be
inferred through the suits we walked in
cut off from the touch of the world
we watched like pilgrims
in love from afar alight
with fire in the body itself felt
as a world the mind apulse in a living
wire of thought tungsten in
darkness the person as planet
the surface of Mars the inside
of our souls aware each
to each and all to all
The way we knew the way had changed
and never again would remain the same
long enough for us to understand it
The way the place was just there
the way you were just thinking stone there
The way everything we thought we knew
in the sky fell away and left us
standing in the visible world
patterned by wind to a horizon
you could almost touch a little
prince on a little world looking for
The way the stars shone at noon
on the flanks of the big volcanoes
poking through the sky itself
out into space we walked in space
and on the sand at once and knew
we knew we were not at home the way
We always knew we were not
at home we are visitors on this planet
the Dalai Lama said on Earth
we are here a century at most
and during that time we must try
to do something good something useful
The way the Buddha did with our lives
the way on Mars we always knew this
always saw it in the bare face
of the land under us the spur
and gully shapes of our lives
all bare of ornamentation
red rock red dust the bare
mineral here of now
and we the animals standing in it
TWO YEARS
We were brothers in those days you and I
Mom off to work ten hours a day
No child care no friends no family
So off we went on our merry way
To a nearby park walled by city streets
Where Jamaican nannies watched us play
One eye on their charges all stunned by the heat
Kids here and there mom following daughter
Me following you so cautious and neat
Hands gripped as you rose on the teeter-totter
Intent as you stepped on the bouncy bridge
Then tossed your head back burbling laughter
When you reached solid ground and stood on the edge
Looking back at the span you had crossed without falling
Plop on the grass to eat our first lunch
You tease as we eat your laughter upwelling
Pretend to refuse your apple juice
Knock it aside and laugh at its spilling
And laugh again at the flight of a bluejay
Off to used bookstores' dim musty aisles
Retrieving the books you have pulled out and used
To toss on the ground and collect people's smiles
Until I stop you and you throw a fit
And so into the backpack off hiking for miles
Your forehead snug on the back of my neck
Home then to microwave Mom's frozen milk
So that when you wake ravenous for it
I'll have tested the temperature with a lick
And can lay you out in my elbow's nook
And watch you suck to the last squick squick
And then you nap again I write my book
And for an hour I am on Mars
Or sitting at my desk lost in thought as I look
Down at the perpetual parade of cars
Your cry wakes us both from this dream
And we're back at it the movement of the stars
No more regular than our routine
Untellable tedium not just the diapers
The spooning of food the screams
But also the weekly pass of the street sweeper
The hours together playing with blocks
I set them up you knock them down nothing neater
And all the time you learning to talk
Glossolalia peppered with names
Simple statements firm orders Let go walk
Telling me to do things a game
That made you laugh also knowing
When things were in different ways the same
Blue truck blue sky your face glowing
With delight as your language grew
Till description became a kind of telling
Power I spit out the sun I sky the blue
Sitting in that living room together
Each in his own world surprised by new
Things spaced out lost to each other
Used to each other like Siamese twins
Confined to the house by steamy weather
Me watching volleyball on ESPN
Listening to Beethoven reading the Post
You moving your trucks around babbling when
You felt like it absorbed focused lost
In your own space so fully that watching you
I forgot my many selves collapsed to one and was most
Happy the past is gone David I asked beloved of
God do you remember Bethesda
The way my mother would have
Asked me Do you remember Zion
And David looked at me curiously and said No
Dad not really I know how the house looked but all
That comes from pictures in Mom's albums you know
Yes my first memory is not of Zion but
California the Christmas I was three a brown
Trike put together by my dad next to the tree but
My dad tells me he bought the trike assembled
How can we say what did or did not
Happen David watching you I tremble
You know the world are sophisticated
You say you do not remember
That time and now you know so much of hate
Of anguish of death
Will you ever again be so elated
By the sight of swans swimming under the wharf
Shrieking with laughter as they dove for tossed bread
I hope we are these moments deeper than self
Deeper than memory always connected
This helps hope stave off dread
Brother of mine boy receding
I will try to remember for us
The time when you could be so purely happy
I SAY GOOD-BYE TO MARS
Hiking alone in the Sierra Nevada
I stopped one evening in Dragon Basin
Above treeline by a small stream
Tric
kling down a flaw in the granite
On the floor of this crack were
Lush little lawns green moss
Furring the banks krummholz bonsai
Clustering over low black falls
Transparent water glossed on top
Standing there I looked
Over the fellfield basin a cupped
Hand of stone catching rocks
Inlaid with a tapestry of plants
Lichen sedge and saxifrage
Tippling green the pebble all bare
Under jagged ridges splintering the sky
Beside the rill I made my camp
Ground cloth foam pad sleeping bag
Pack for a pillow stove at my feet
In the failing light my dinner steaming
To the gurgle of water and the sky
And the stars popping into existence
Over the crest of the range still
Alpenglow pink spiking indigo
The line between the colors pulsing
As they faded to two shades of black the number
Of stars amazing the Milky Way perfectly
Articulating my fall up and into sleep
And was never tired
Dreamed the same dreams
And heard the rockslides rattle and thunder
In the throats of these living mountains
Something woke me I put on my glasses
I lay looking up at stars and the Perseids
Meteors darting across the starry black
Every few heartbeats every direction
Fast slow long short far near
White or some a shade of red some
Seeming to hiss slow down break up
Firing great sparks away to the sides
In their wakes I watched held by granite
Entrained to a meteor shower beyond
Any I had imagined possible the stars
Still fixed in their places lighting
The great shattered granite walls
Of the basin all pale witness
Together to fireworks one
Plowing the air right over the peaks
Fizzing sparks over Fin Dome
One shot down just overhead
Wow I cried and sat up to look
As a great BOOM knocked me into
A dark land sparked by fire
Fires burning My God
I cried oh my God oh my God
Struggling to get out of bag into boots
On my feet out stumbling around a smell
Like autumn leaves burning the past
I took up my water bag and crashed about
Quenching fires that reignited
As I ran to the next oh my God
And ran to the stream and stopped thinking
That here was the action of my life
Putting out fires where there was no wood
Vision crisscrossed with afterimages
Of the final fall green bolts
In every blink of the eye finally
I stood in the dark understanding
There was no need to hurry
I came to a chunk of vivid orange
A meteorite still glowing with heat
I sat down before it
I calmed my breathing
Cross-legged I watched it glow
I put my hand out to it
I could feel its heat some distance
Away the pure color of fire
Films feathering on its surface
Incandescent in the night
Illuminating the glacial polish
Of the slab reflecting in that black
Mirror the night quiet the air still
Slightly smoky the stars again
Fixed in their places the meteor
Shower past its peak the stream
Chuckling as it had all along
Oblivious to the life in the sky
A companion of sorts as I watched
The burning visitation warm
My hands as it filmed over
Darkening in its orange
Brilliance until it was both orange
And black I went to get my sleeping
Bag to drape me in my vigil
Sleep gone again so many nights
Like that but this time justified by
My visitor cooling aglow black flakes
Crusting over growing
Orange darker underneath
The moon rose over the jagged peaks
Bathed the basin in its cool light
Flecked the water in the stream
Dark air holding invisible light
The meteorite now black over orange
Still warm still the center
Of all that basin dark on its slab
Of polished pale granite
In the dawn the rock was purest black
Of course I took it home with me
And put it on mantelpiece as a
Memento of that night and a mark
Of where we stand in the world but
I will always remember how it felt
The night it shot down out of the sky
And it glowed orange as I sat beside it
And it warmed me like a little sun
Purple Mars
He crawls out of troubled dreams half-stunned and begging for coffee. Out to the family around the kitchen table. Breakfast a succession of Cassatts as painted by Bonnard, or Hogarth.
“Hey I'm going to finish my book today.”
“Good.”
“David, hurry up and get dressed, it's almost time for school.”
David looks up from a book. “What?”
“Get dressed it's almost time. Tim, do you want cereal?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He puts Tim back on a chair in front of cereal. “This okay?”
“No.” Shoveling it in.
School time approaches and David begins his daily reenactment of Zeno's paradox, a false conundrum first proposed by Zeno, concerning Achilles and how the closer it came time to go to school the slower Achilles moved and the less he heard from the surrounding world, until he entered an entirely different space-time continuum interacting very weakly with this one. Wondering how Neutrino Boy can ever have become so absentminded, his father reads the coffee cups while grinding the beans for his little morning pitcher of Greek coffee. He used to drink espresso, a coffee drink made by vapor extraction, but recently he has advanced to a muddy Greek coffee he makes himself, savoring the smells as he works. On Mars the thinner atmosphere would not allow him to smell things as well, and so nothing there would taste as good as this morning coffee. In fact it might be a culinary nightmare on Mars, everything tasting like dust, partly because it was dusty. But they would adjust to that if they could.
“Are you ready yet?”
“What?”
He bundles Tim into the bike cart with a bowl of cereal, bikes behind David through the village to school. It is late summer at the 37th latitude north, and flowers spangle the sides of the bike path. Clouds puff like puffy clouds in the sky. “If we were biking to school on Mars it would be easier to pedal but we'd be colder.”
“On Venus we'd be colder.”
Schoolyard full of kids. “Have a good day at school. Listen to your teacher.”
“What?”
He pedals to Tim's day-care, drops him off, then rides quickly home. There he writes a list of things to do, which makes him feel virtuous and helps to organize his inchoate feeling that there is too much to do, which in itself is helpful, which leads him to think that things aren't really as bad as he thought, which gives him the inspiration to turn the list into a paper airplane and shoot it at the trash can. Not that any causation can be deduced from this sequence. But things will work out. Or not.
He decides that before working he will mow his lawn. You have to mow a yard before the grass reaches knee high, especially if you use a push mower, which he d
oes, for reasons ecological, aesthetic, athletic, and psychopathological. His next-door neighbor waves to him and he stops abruptly, stunned by a realization. “On Mars these grass clippings would fly out the mower right over my head! I'd have to pull the basket behind me somehow! But the grass wouldn't be as green.”
“You don't think so?” says the neighbor.
Back inside to recover the list and check off mowing. Then he rushes to his desk ready to write. Immense concentration brought to bear instantaneously, or at least as soon as another cup of black mud hits the bloodstream. The first word for the day comes quickly:
“The”
Of course it might not be the right word. He considers it. Time passes in a double helix of eternal no-time, in the blessing that cannot be spoken. He revises, rewrites, restructures. The phrase grows, shrinks, grows, shrinks, changes color. He tries it as free verse, sestina, mathematical equation, glossolalia. Finally he returns to the original formulation, complexifying it with an added nuance:
“The End”
It says what needs to be said; and it's twice as many words as his usual daily output. Time to party.
The printer prints out the typescript of the novel as he rides over and picks up Tim from day-care. Back at home he changes the boy's diaper. The boy's protests and the buzzing printer are counterpoint in the warm summer air. Davis warm summer air; 109 degrees, at least in the antiquated Fahrenheit scale used to accommodate twentieth-century American readers who cannot conceptualize Celsius, not to mention the eminently practical and extremely interesting Kelvin scale, which begins at absolute zero where really one ought to begin. At this moment it is over 300 Kelvin, unless he has miscalculated.
“Boy this is a stinky one.”
Which when one considers it is rather amazing: Diapers stink because of volatile gases released from poop, gases made of organic molecules that did not exist in the earlier ages of the cosmos, among the first generation of stars. Thus these smells are only possible after enough stars have exploded to saturate the galaxy with complex atoms; so every molecule of the scent is a sign of the immense age of the universe, and of life's likely omnipresence as a late emergent phenomenon, and taken as such a cosmological mystery, in that it indicates an increase of order in an entropic system, i.e., a miracle. Amazing!