I see you at the periphery of the gathering,
at the edge of the bonfire, seated on a hay bale,
just this side of invisible,
not quite here, not quite not here.
Your presence is pervasive,
though the fiddler’s dog sleeps peacefully
beside the fiddler’s tapping toe,
paying no attention to you at all.
From All Appearances
Roger’s family and friends
gather together on the bank
of La Prairie River,
remember him
with stories and songs,
poems and prayers.
Roger is the only one here
who, from all appearances,
is not here,
though his presence is pervasive.
It makes me wonder
who else that isn’t here,
is here.
A Dream of Roger Young
Old friend,
thank you for visiting last night,
and for bringing our long-gone dogs,
Pluto and Frodo, with you
for a romp in a sun-dappled wood,
a splash in a singing creek,
as we relived old times.
I know how busy you must be
with so many dreams to enter,
so many people missing you.
And I know it won’t be long
before I join you,
seeking sleeping lovers and friends,
just to remind them to remember us
as they wake with bemused smiles,
bittersweet light in their hearts.
A Poem at Ann’s Passing
On the day of Ann’s passing
crabapple trees dress in pink blossoms,
each petal seemingly illuminated from within.
Cat birds and cardinals sing their mating songs—
glorious warbles sung with urgency and soul.
On the night of Ann’s passing
moonlight is eclipsed by shadow,
the way the light dimmed in her eyes;
but then, moonlight is re-kindled,
the moon continues its journey
like a shining spirit set free.
Apple blossoms, song birds, return when they should,
moonlight always triumphs over darkness.
We are bequeathed beauty, song and light,
to furnish the house where memory dwells.
Let us share this softening of our hearts.
Blueberry Muffins
She left a bowl of blueberries
on the kitchen counter,
went to the post office with her husband,
just to ride along.
How was she to know
he wouldn’t see the flashing light,
that she’d never get back
to add flour, sugar, milk and eggs,
baking powder, salt and soda?
She’d never have left the kitchen
in such a mess if she had known.
The day of her funeral
her children are milling around in the kitchen;
the counter and kitchen table covered
with cakes and pies and six kinds of cookies
brought over by the neighbors,
but everyone here hungers
for one of her blueberry muffins.
Pretender
The widow turns on the kitchen radio,
tunes it to a ballgame while she watches TV.
The radio bothers the hell out of her,
just like it did when her husband was alive.
But after the ballgame and her shows are over,
when she turns the distractions off at bedtime,
the house is so quiet;
she’s the only one in their double bed
and there’s just no way
to pretend her way out of that.
Veteran
He returned from ’Nam,
discharged honorably, he was told,
though he didn’t feel that way.
The first thing he did after disembarking in Minneapolis
was tear the name tag and medals from his uniform,
flush them down the toilet in the airport,
stuff his dress greens in a wastebasket,
change into his civvies
and smoke some of the grass he’d smuggled back
as he sat in a locked toilet stall.
His parents waited outside
and as he rode home in the back seat of the yellow Dodge
his mother talked about him going back to school,
his father, about where he might get a job.
He sat back, dazzled by the lights of “The World”
and wondered how he’d ever get all this blood off his hands
and why his parents couldn’t see it, couldn’t smell it.
Thirty years later, his parents have died;
he’s been married three times,
has two daughters and a son who don’t acknowledge him.
His legs hurt, his veins are shot, his words slurred from whiskey.
His hands shake, he can’t walk a straight line
and yet he drives a beat-up car from one bar to the next,
caring only about the next drink,
hoping his disability check will last the month.
He keeps his bloody hands in his pockets.
Etched in Granite
Name after name of those who died
in a far-off jungle war are etched in granite,
a wall to justify death; the names,
those that politicians call fallen heroes.
But there is no wall, no memorial
for those who came home, eyes open,
bodies alive, souls dead,
got drunk and stayed that way thirty years,
strewing the wreckage of failed marriages
and neglected children in their wakes,
dead souls taking decades
to leave bodies ravaged by misery
married to guilt and shame.
On the wall I’ve built in my heart
I trace your name with my finger.
Lunch at Kay’s Kitchen
(For Dan V. and Dan L.)
We were all so glad
you guys could join us for lunch,
though in spirit only, thanks to
Misters Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.
You didn’t need a menu,
didn’t order a Rueben
or a plate of ribs,
didn’t finish a meal with a slice
of Kay’s famous rhubarb pie,
but you sat in the corner booth
with us in the same way
you live in the corners of our hearts.
The Mourners at “Shiner’s” Funeral
are old, themselves;
many walk with canes,
some use walkers, some wheelchairs.
Some are aided by daughters
in their fifties or sixties,
who guide them through the ritual.
These old men and women
have lived in this town,
gone to this church all their lives;
they know exactly how it will be
four days after they die.
Fixing
Each nail and screw,
every nut and bolt and washer
is sorted by size,
stored
in bins with its own kind.
All the hand tools
are hung on brackets in pegboard,
their outlines painted in white.
The tablesaw and sander
are pushed against the garage wall
and the workbench is clean
but for a single short one-by-two,
cut at a forty-five-degree angle,
a small pile of sawdust.
I wonder what he was making, repairing.
Did he die with a blueprint in his head,
buzzing around like snatches of poems inside mine?
Will someone find my notebook one day,
this jumble of symbols
that could be put together any which way,
try to make sense of it,
try to figure out what I was fixing?
Don’t Forget
In a dream
my father knocked on my door.
He looked so good,
so real,
so alive.
Shocked, I stammered,
Dad, I thought you were . . .
Dead? I am, he said,
but I was feeling a little faded.
You’ve not been thinking of me.
I thought I’d pay you a visit.
It’s true, you know;
the dead do live on
in the memories of the living.
Don’t forget us.
III: When the TV’s Turned Off
Between Melancholy and Nostalgia
I want you to hear this poem
like you might hear a train in the night
an hour before you see the light
of its great diesel engine
rockin’ through a vast grassland
where the dreams of coyotes
outnumber the dreams of people.
I want you to hear this poem
in your sleep.
I want this poem to wake you
so that you curse it,
so it puts a feeling in your stomach
somewhere between melancholy
and sweet nostalgia.
I want you to think of faces and places
that have come and gone
like a hundred-fifty boxcars
loaded with grain from a plowed-up prairie,
saw logs ripped from a mountain.
I want you to wake from a dream
you can’t quite remember,
a dream that lingers
like a humming in steel tracks,
leaves you a little wobbly
when your feet first touch the floor.
That’s how I want you to hear this poem.
Blame the Poem
Dead-ass tired by noon,
though not from shoveling snow,
digging out the car,
carrying in firewood,
all before breakfast.
I blame the poem
that woke me at 3:00 a.m.
like a dog whining
to be let out to piss.
It wouldn’t let me be
until I got up and scribbled the words,
then kept whining and scratching
until I got it right.
Nude Modeling
I sit perfectly still,
bare naked, atop a stepladder,
my robe draped over a rung.
My ass is numb,
I stare dumbly at a crawling clock.
One pretty art student,
swishes charcoal in her sketchbook,
winks at me and laughs.
I feel movement
where anything but perfect stillness
would bring growing embarrassment.
But, I think, it could be worse.
If this was a poetry reading
I’d be baring my soul.
Dental Insurance
You just go to a dentist’s office,
lie back in a reclining chair
and two beautiful women,
one black-haired, one blond,
give you laughing gas
and say Good night.
When you wake up
the pain of that ol’ wisdom tooth
will be gone.
We’ll give you some drugs
for the soreness.
Don’t go to work tomorrow.
Apple Harvest
The apple tree in the backyard,
so heavy with Harelreds,
we need to prop up its limbs
with two-by-fours, one-by-sixes,
a length of old rain gutter,
a broken stepladder, shepherd’s hooks,
whatever we can find
to keep the apples’ weight from breaking branches.
Yet the branches droop lower every day.
To lighten their load, we pick some apples before they’re ripe,
leave them in a pile on the ground,
a sacrificial offering to rabbits and raccoons,
to deer, in the hope they will leave some fruit to mature.
All this, and still the serpent is not appeased;
it picks the finest apple from the tree,
offers it to my wife,
who, in turn, offers it to me.
She has a look in her eyes I can’t resist,
Eden be damned. I want what she proffers
though there is no end to the grief it will cause me
and now, I’ve been told,
any future apples must be earned by the sweat of my brow.
A serpent, disguised as a girl,
went to school
with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil
in her backpack.
She was gonna share it with her boyfriend,
but the teachers found it, ate the fruit first
and taught this knowledge to all their students
year after year after year.
Everyone believed in these teachings
but everyone forgot this knowledge
came from a serpent,
metaphorical though it was.
It wasn’t long before
the teachers had killed all the snakes;
they had no choice, they said.
The Implications of Washing Dishes
You’re washing dishes in water so hot
it turns your hands red, wrinkles your skin.
This implies you have
food
water
pots
pans
dishes
silverware
a sink
a residence.
This implies you ate today.
You’re washing dishes—
two plates
two glasses
two knives
two forks
two spoons.
This implies
you’re a lucky fucker, buckaroo.
You’ve got someone to eat with you.
When I Met You
My first job out of the army
was a paper route
delivering papers to paperboys.
I had this beater ’61 Chevy pickup;
I put my dogs in back,
but they’d jump out at every stop,
following their noses into the neighborhoods.
I’d holler
“Barney! Frodo! God damn it, get back here!”
It was 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.,
they’d eventually come back to the truck
and luckily, nobody called the cops on us
for disturbing the peace of suburbia
or leaving dog shit on manicured lawns.
I usually rolled a couple joints
and had to add a quart of oil to the truck
to get through the route,
get back to the farm, go to sleep
with both dogs on the bed.
This all ended when I met you.
Sister Bay, Wisconsin
While we watch from the Irish café;
an old man in gray walks past the blue harbor,
sailboats rock at anchor, gentle as cradles,
gulls fly above, underbellies sunlit pink.
A green truck drives through this painting,
three black-and-white goats
perfectly balanced in its bed.
Our eyes turn from the window, meet
above the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth.
The morning holds all the promise of a kiss.
Winter
We leave our footprints in the snow,
our boots, just inside the door.
Caps, coats, mittens,
we hang beside the wood stove,
fling the rest
on the floor beside the bed
as we disrobe each other.
Your wooly sweater, your bra,
my red long johns, flannel shirt,
our socks, our jeans,
all touch, entwined,
but not dancing, possessing
none of the rhythm of our skins.
Lost Key
Panic stops my heart, I choke on my own breath
as I reach into an empty pocket.
I try another, another, every pocket,
then search them all again—no key.
I’ve lost the way to enter the house of your heart
after living there all these years;
I’d just assumed the door would always be unlocked,
that I could walk in anytime because I once gave you a rose.