PRIORITY MAIL FOR MY SONS
I mailed you an extra year
from another country
where wooden sidewalks
end in cinder paths
where privies lean
a little more each year
and morning light falls weightless
weightless on rain barrels
Enclosed you'll find a chevy
with running boards
a Burma Shave sign
that points the way you'll
travel years from now
I've wrapped with care
the smell of citronella
camphor and cod liver oil
the gramaphone scratching out
Hi-Di-Hi's and Bye-Bye-Blues
A blade of grass to whistle through
a fortress at the beach
a woolen bathing suit that
shrinks an inch each season
It's just arrived and waiting
at the back door of your life
LIKE A BIRD IN SUDDEN LIFTS
In a pause between
one future and the next
we enter stepping lightly
and move through air
like a weather vane
turning on its swivel.
Like a bird in sudden lifts
we explore a steady
stream of horizons
a day of passing sky
consenting light a sound
with silence of its own
and if the wind is right
we lift our arms
and fly.
SUNDAY FISHING: THE BLUES ARE RUNNING
After the boat returns,
we watch men hosing decks
slippery with scales
and eyes and blood.
The crew shows us how to
hook bait through eyes,
how to cast, how to play
the line until the catch.
It's a delicate business
knowing tug from tangle
and reeling in the fish,
a different kind of mathematics.
The sun's a shawl of burning.
Stunned by heat,
we tip bottles back
and iced beer drives
a spike through our heads.
Suddenly, the pole's alive
and a sweet energy flows
up from ocean floor.
Arching in parabolic curves,
a shape flares out of the water.
With the strength of blind love,
we grip the rod and hold on.
The fish flails teaching us
distance and direction
and the line's a tether
neither will let go.
Netted, dumped in sacks,
the dead lie intimate as lovers.
White underbellies flash
in the light, smoky bodies
darken, jagged teeth
close neatly together.
A stiffening of weather
sends us back and everything
promised has been delivered.
WINDING DOWN
Everything yields to its soft spot
Cream goes sour
Light unravels
Time strips down to crisped grass,
burned blades of old summers
Music pales to the sound
a mirror makes in an empty room
Words thin to whispers and hands
reach across pillows
exploring empty space
On a blue day among the leaves
there's panic among small animals
shores are thick with shells sucked
clean and ponds choked with drowned
stumps where nothing swims
The reds and greens of dreams evaporate
leaving dried pools of darkness
The season's buried under a debris
of days and the dead shift into
new positions underground
NO PERMANENT ADDRESS
she pilots the car
up the cracked driveway
into the street
after the stop sign
she changes her face and
pulls into her other life
every street's a new language
with purple mouths of lilacs
trees crowding horizons
and mountains hanging in chains
with a light hand she
steers the car while her
shadow on the windshield
waits like an older sister
the road snakes ahead
up the mountain
tires hissing like wings
steadily away from earth
she's looking for a place
where she can hear
prologues of sun and rain
where the dark eye of night closes
where rivers have no permanent addresses
she's looking for her wild-weed children
all bark and twigs
chirping through summer
just about to become
she's looking for the point
where clock and compass meet
then she'll sit in antique darkness
drinking wine
staring at the pacific
its waves drowning in salt and secrets
she knows distance and numbers
divide memory by half
and when she's old
there's nothing left to remember
so she sits in silence
and watches the sky unwind
LET ME ASSURE YOU
Since I'm your everyday love,
let me assure you,
you've broken nothing that's
not been smashed before and mended
Sometimes your subtle knife
caused a few shudders
but by now, digging deeper,
it hardly hurts at all.
and when it's my turn
to trace your networks
until I find weak spots
and blood spatters both of us,
we are not surprised.
In the morning,
we drink our coffee and
watch the same bird
attacking its reflection
in our window
over and over.
