A butterfly dancing in the sunlight,
A bird singing to his mate,
The whispering pines,
The restless sea,
The gigantic mountains,
A stately tree,
The rain upon the roof,
The sun at early dawn,
A boy with rod and hook,
The babble of a shady brook,
A woman with her smiling babe,
A man whose eyes are kind and wise,
Youth that is eager and unafraid—
When all is said, I do love best
A little home where love abides,
And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest.
by the window of his hospital room. So late in the day
and he won’t let us cheat. Cards slipping on his rickety tray,
the orderly rows collapsing into one another,
his hand diminishing, he turns over the one card
that won’t fit anywhere. We couldn’t finish.
Wait, I said, we’re almost done. He shook his head.
Luck, chance. No skill involved. No will. No bluff. No time
to start a new game. I left my father waving in his window.
Days later I bought a deck, shuffled the stiff cards, set them up
the way he’d shown me, and—beginner’s luck?—I won.
Can you win a game you’ve played alone? No need to display
a poker face to yourself. No kidding, he said, I just won too.
My father’s a joker. Bruno, our neighbor used to say,
you’re a card. So no surprise what he taught me:
when you’re done you have nothing in your hand.
The universe demotes me,
yet again, to coin-operated laundry,
and each night, when everyone
is sleeping, our tongues all migrate
one mouth to the left. The tongue
in your mouth, now, is not
the one you started out with. Your tongue
is half a world away. None of my dead, either,
have ever been interested
in coming back. Plastic cups
drift into my yard
from the fraternity house across the street.
Brothers, I’ve been looking
for someone to hand my body
over to, so that the dirt
will not page through it. Rib bones
like lines, clouds like accordions,
and soon enough the rain
dropping like choir members. What can I say?
What could be said. The church
was always so hot. Tongue
come back, come back
for a little bit longer. I’ve only got
the one death to my name, one death
and I’m not going to ruin it.
You were so small in my hands
no shrapnel could hit you,
but the dust and
smoke of the bomb
rushed into your lungs.
No need for any gauze.
They just closed your eyes.
No need for any shroud
.
You were already
in your swaddle blanket.
I miss my magnolias, miss my maples, think
where did they go, think, oh yes, to the past,
that place where everything goes and can I visit?
No, but also yes. And can I stay away? Also yes,
but also no. And in the same way that languages
only get simpler, people only get sadder. Yesterday
at the dentist I thought Thank god for nitrous oxide
and I thought Thank god for Dr. Rachel drilling away
in my tooth but wanting nothing she does to hurt me.
I wish that were true all the time. That we all wanted
nothing we did to hurt anyone at all. My friend
with a beautiful house insists that we call his pet
a companion animal, which I don’t think changes
very much, but I want nothing that I do to hurt him,
so I call his dog a companion animal, and then
I think Is that what my trees were? Not really
my trees, but companion trees, offering me
their flowers and then their leaves, offering me
their oxygen in exchange for my carbon dioxide,
not exactly grateful for my copious applications
of neem oil to kill the parasites invading their branches
but flourishing in the absence of those pests, the flowers
and leaves all I really wanted in return. I miss
my companion trees, my flowering Jane,
my flowering Brown Beauty, my flowering Star,
my leafy red maples, scarlet and feathery
all summer. My friend’s companion animal is licking
my face and my friend asks Could you be content
anywhere? And I say Yes, I can be content anywhere,
but then I think Is that true? Of course it’s easy to be content
at my handsome friend’s beautiful house, by his
heated pool, in what might be a physical manifestation
of contentment if ever there was one. So I think it again
on the subway, think it again writing emails, think it again,
but alas sadly: No. It’s not true. I can’t be content here
in my uncomfortable present, in my uncomfortable chair,
on the uncomfortable subway, at this uncomfortable desk,
in this uncomfortable classroom. But oddly, I am content
to visit the past, to say Hello everything I’ve lost,
to say I wish you could come here to the present,
my lost companion trees. I wish you could meet
everything I’ve found.
As Karen Blixen said, the cure’s the sea
—or sweat, or tears—but I prefer the sea.
In fact, it’s homeopathy. Why cry
with eyes baptised (if reddened) by the sea?
The metaphors of fabric come to mind:
cool silk or aqua velvet, summer sea
(or better, come to body: intimate,
enveloped skin on skin, the lover sea).
The bone-ache deep, the pains gone unexplained:
for now just dive, ameliorator sea.
The “mermaid’s tears,” smoothed glass or plastic: lovely
but hazardous to creatures of the sea.
This evening’s rough: Poseidon snaps my straps.
Pathetic fallacy, bipolar sea.
And in their one-piece suits, the ladies age
and silver, laugh and rage: September sea.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.