Epiphany

The three of us drove here through the night

When the world had one full circuit run

We watched our sister nurse her Son

It has never failed, our guttering light,

And now this tiny hope for heaven.

The three of us drove here through the night

When the world had one full circuit run

Our hearts in brief lives delight

Though we are false, He is smitten

His love has His law undone

The three of us drove here through the night

When the world had one full circuit run

We watched our sister nurse her Son

Quickened here now Son and Father

Into our carefulness are fallen

And everything we have always known

His mother will grieve when he leaves her

And for this grief He will find pardon

Quickened here now Son and Father

Into our carefulness are fallen

His harvest too will fail in winter

A tomb he'll have. It will be opened.

The end of things will make no end

Quickened here now Son and Father

Into our carefulness are fallen

And everything we have always known

The Son of God is hungry, small

Against the cold a fire is made

The fallen find they are beloved

Soon he will begin to crawl

A time will come and he'll be dead

The Son of God is hungry, small

Against the cold a fire is made

He is here to woo us all

Though we will make a willful bride

Look at him! He shares our bed

The Son of God is hungry, small

Against the cold a fire is made

The fallen find they are beloved

A Vision of the Great Procession in Which All are Mummers

Thus we parade the august avenue: apes

Bearing above our heads the beehive homes

Of each buzzing, bright, particular bit

Which swarm is equal just in number

To all we ever think or hope or say.

Attendant angels bright and fallen (suspiciously

Alike to bees costumed for a role,

Unless the plainer bugs are too seraphim

In civilian clothes) all bearing ribbons.

Other figures follow behind each of us

In postures, masks, and dress depicting scenes

All in certain correspondence with each act

Peculiar to our own life's history.

These serial mimes trail behind in lines

Whose lengths reflect, as they must, the accidents

That origin and end invariably are for all.

Apes and angels, demons, bees and mimes

Proceed with drum and horn, guns and keening.

No crowds are drawn to watch or clap or wave:

Everyone is in the parade. All are mummers.

In fact many, many eyes are closed

Or attend only to their own buzzing cloud.

Other eyes revert to glories past and shames.

Some call out, or marshal themselves

(All sans baton), while others mob along.

When at the bank the paraded ranks debouch

They are quickly quit of every entourage

And at this shore are softly stripped

And docile, shocked, at peace or war,

Beneath the waters disappear to slough

Away their flesh and hides till skulls are left

And piled high a long way off from here

Facing every way, abandoned houses

Lit by a shifting sun and full of wind.

I am for forgetting

“I always lightly,” she claimed,

“am for forgetting.

Left early 'on a lark'...

sort of foolishly.” Free of any after

or lowness, and laughed

at something else.

Madrigal

Disaster's pretty younger sister

Dark careless love's eager making

Naked and shameless and quiet in the morning

You know now you'll not easy leave her

Getting here was as fast as falling

Disaster's pretty younger sister

Dark careless love's eager making

Say nothing as you lie there

Listen to the coffee brewing

The thing in your chest beating, beating

Disaster's pretty younger sister

Dark careless love's eager making

Naked and shameless and quiet in the morning

A Success

I've brought a bucket of shavings and scraps,

of waste and mistakes that cluttered the backyard boatshed

to the stone ring in the yard my wife made

to keep our fires. I go to work with the matches.

I'm puffing at it on hands and knees when the rain

comes: slapping, fat and heavy, building

fast. More matches are useless and then

it is soaked and back in the shop I'm shaking

my head. A fool who can't light a fire

with five matches. Who tries in a rainstorm.

There in the shed with the pine planks I scheme

to make (fool?) a skiff of, I stare

at our trees through the rain's gorgeous veils

and then turn to see the scrapheap brightly ablaze.

Gloss this shopfloor world

“Tell me something I don't know,

something I will not regret

hearing. Tell me the good thing.

Golden words. Unkeep a secret.”

“No. The thing you do not have

words will fail until, footsore, hands

calloused, midnight watch stood, tool

handles slicked with toolcraft done,

sit beside the men that did with

you. Say the half-tale words.

Tell yourselves the bright track run:

words that only you can hear.”

“I am not just some young fool

naif. I know old men love

lies about their lives, tell tales,

wish they had not run out their

sap so fast or cheap. Sing out

hidden help. Rhyme Joy.

Only some ease do I want.

Give it to me. Say the words.”

“Thus is not the truth. Think no

words so fine, real. All good

things are done. Without names, God

has as will be done done, made.”

“Miser! Bring me aught well heard!

Gloss this shopfloor world.

Say the meaning. Some least light!

Otherwise relieve hard toil. Grief

comfort. Lull at least.

Open your mouth!”

Some of what I remember of Philadelphia

The sandstone edifice

of historical interest (theoretically)

obscured by chainlink (useless)

to guard against pigeonshit:

defaced and preserved.

Ghetto palms rip up the roof

of the awful Friends' prison

Hot bright August night

Buildings blinking at airplanes

Bone thin madmen

in fifteen pants

and parkas

glaring, sweating, muttering

tottering past the sewers stench

Pent up boys

yell lust down

at girls passing between

the juvie and the gourmet shop

A million and a half a day awake

to pretzels three for a dollar

in the ruins of schemes and monuments

a cluttered vault of dreams

of the Peacable Kingdom,

ice cream,

fast steel,

Liberty ships and

Liberty bells

Sunrise was an operation in my day

that sent whores to the Roundhouse

while Rizzo and Rocky raised bronze arms

and Ramona Africa hating back

(and who can blame her)

through a bullhorn

to a park

full in the summer

with blacks and whites who don't care

Nicetown and Fishtown and Mantua

Skinny Joe and girlie shows

Summer's stagelit tits

Murder in the newspapers,

and others that don't make it in

The man shot down by a cop on my block

while my daughter watched

I always took it slow

on the Pendergrass curve

I rode around and around

the collapsed and empty dome

of the Centennial

It was all gorgeous and falling apart

Good Morning Sestina

Monday

For an hour the sun has been over

that ridge. Pass the milk.

Girls you need to stop..

Can you get your sister?

Ok, time to go.

Now, no one is here.

Tuesday

Its so cold in here.

Winter isn't over.

Tell her we need to go

soon. Is there any milk?

Will you walk your sister

to the bus stop?

Wednesday

I said stop!

We need to clean up in here.

You and your sister...

Please scoot over

Put away the milk!

And away they go

Thursday

After they all go

there is this sudden stop.

On the table is a puddle of milk.

Something lessens in here,

deflates somewhat when it's over -

that riot of brothers and sisters

Friday

I think that's your sister's...

Can we all go

over there after school is over?

Do you think you can stop

on your way back here

and just pick up some milk?

Saturday

Shower. Bacon. Buttermilk

batter. A whisk stirs.

Newspaper. Did you hear

that two years ago...

Coffee cups topped

off. I need six letters, ends O-V-E-R.

Sunday

My brothers and sisters, we need to spill the milk of our kindness over and over everything here as we go, because it really won't ever stop.

We Flounder

The truth is everywhere. We flounder

  swim in it. What we breath. See through.

  It is the ground we, sideways glancing,

  press with our off cheek. And the air

 we stare at and know not and hooked

  and drawn or dredged up drown in.

  And also the deeper water.

  Black offshore. Beyond us.

  You can't miss it:

it tastes of salt.

Tanka in gratitude for a glacial erratic

This quartz was lifted

flew slowly here borne by ice

to cure writer's block.

Sat here while we invented

alphabets, and now these words.

The Tire Swing Repeats Everything

One long swing

                        a flat arc slowly

                                                along a long line

                       of stretched Manila.

    They live here

                        and know and let

                                                  lovers ride their tire

                                      at night.

  Less of every other thing

                                       than this arc slowly.

                                                                    Without the sun the sky

                         is alight with every other star.

        In the dark

                       make one long swing

                                                     flat arc slowly let

                                                                             lovers ride their tire

                                                          and live here.

                 The still spot at the end

                                                    is the pivot: how

                                                                            it stretches out

                                                     for miles between

                      the tree and the road.

There their living

                     room light is on.

                                            My wife, laughing

                                                                     makes one long swing

                                         for miles in the dark

               The tree shadows

half the sky

                half the arc beneath

   the open sky

                    at night

 shows every other thing

     At night everything

                               the sun showed each

                                                           shadows together

                                with the dark ground.

         Every other star

across half the sky.

Half the arc

              stretches out

                               for miles over the dark ground

   between the tree's

                               shadow and the road's.

          She floats, still.

Pivots, moving still,

                      stretching out slowly

                                                for miles, laughing.

                                                                           By me

                                                           on the grass

                       looking up from the ground

at her in the sky.

                   Tucked in to the grass and ground

                                                                 all roots and earth

                                                                                        and everything else buried

                                                            and shaded, looking up

                                  at her swing, the sky

     and everything else.

Your slung weight

                       on the way down builds.

 The ground pulls down.

                                  Then you rise

                                                    out and away, a little

                                                                                   lighter always until

                                                                       that floating.

                                              You weigh nothing

                 and pivot to fall again

  along one arc

                    pivoting slowly.

                                          Lovers, laughing, float

                                at night

      between shadows

over the dark ground.

You're hanging on hard

                                  at the lowest point

                                                            your weight slung closest

                                     to the dark ground.

That is when you move fastest.

                                               It is the pull of everything else

                                                                                         buried and shaded

                                                                                                               on your slung weight

                                                                                     that moves you fastest

                                                                along the long arc

                                                     for miles

                                        in their yard

                 between the tree

    and their light,

laughing.

On Fire

I

From my first memory to the fourth grade

I lived under the sun of constant summer.

Lemon trees to climb. Books. Bedtimes.

Riding tricycles on islands: Coronado and Oahu.

We left the West, all of it,

in a van, friendless, for Virginia.

Our stuff boxed and sent ahead.

California's last sunset a fire on the sea.

I stare at stars through the back glass

tightpacked enough to cast a shadow.

Hearing only engine and road hum.

Lulled, until all is awash in another light.

I am not frightened of the house on fire.

Windows pour flames upwards.

A few silhouette men watching.

No firetrucks. Just the whole house burning,

and them on the street, and us slowly

passing, witnessing, an awe at the thing.

More fire, fountains of it, washing out

starlight from the sky and anything other

than fire and witnesses from behind my eyes.

We passed on the right: a good omen.

A burnt offering to some power

fed all their furnishings, photographs, socks

burning linens, boardgames, bras,

all anchors and fastenings made bright light

then ash. Whatever they are caught

up in over. All comforts also:

the porch at night, kitchen table, couch.

Ruined and free, fire quit them

of the shackles and shelter they had.

Left them all naked of things.

II

Woody Guthrie's house went up.

His mother lit it. Mad, later

she would burn his sister.

And these only half of them:

his father had yet to survive somehow

his mother's match and kerosene

and his daughter die, burnt

in the apartment on Mermaid Avenue.

How he sang anything but bitterness,

or held his heart open to anyone,

or warmed himself at any hearth,

ever lit a candle or cigarette

or sang “you're so pretty

you'd make any mountain quiver

make hot fire fly from the hard rock..."

Passion a flame even for him.

Primitive to his pain and loss

the bright light that eats to ash

all its fed, and love a fire

too, and we aflame with it.

III

We answer the carcrash with candlelight

vigils. A quiet crowd with votives.

Cheap little lights and some company,

some comfort and then we snuff out

the little symbols of ourselves

and bear away the cooling dead.

We walk our children into the woods

having forgotten nearly all we knew:

red oak from white oak, laurel from ash.

These birdsongs blurring together

as we carry coolers of cold drinks

and the small bundle of split wood

bought from the boy at the gate.

We fuss with snacks until sunset

then laboriously light the campfire

we came here, really, to witness.

To sit a few times in our lives

in a dark, uncomprehended wood

within a ring of firelight.

Fixed

 from Parade Music
 
The dunnings of a world that claims it's owed

ducked, ignored or again postponed.

Enjoy awhile the delight

of no fixed address.

Some jam, some love, some child, some chance:

now hold the deed to your own fence

for ten Good Fridays.

There's a sink to fix.

Can you keep some lovely cunning

safe from rote for ten years running?

Make some bank on your man

though the fight is fixed?

Some spin of without to rhyme within?

With ice and limes and glass and gin

convince even the dunningman

to fix up with the free?

Yes, in the evenings fix a drink

and see how easy it is to think

of joy. Find it best

when most like careless.

Darkness Comes the Sideshow

from Parade Music 

 

Hard at a game of mumbly-peg

The monkey sat and I

Ratty hearted I

Petty thefts and petty lies

Cowardice and pride

Bold false pride.

Where in all those afternoons

Were the flutes of the circus men

the tight rope men?

To take and make this little lout

A circus man or clown

'fore luck ran down

“Is the Pacifique Sea my home? Or the Easterne riches? Is Jerusalem?”

from Parade Music

The soul is a coin.

The soul is dumb.

The soul is a word

in a line by John Donne.

Love is the Maker.

Love is a pill.

Love is the weather

inside of our skull.

Time is a pickle.

Time is a line.

Time is pocket change:

nickles and dimes.

The Plan is in chapters.

The Plan is a sham.

The Plan often hinges

on a guess or a man.

The Truth has its charms.

The Truth is a suit.

The suitor harvests

both berry and root.

The child has led us.

The child is grown.

Less taxes, the child

will get what we own.

God met us sober.

God has us drunk.

God found a bottle

of booze in the trunk.

You are my sister.

You are a lie.

You once served

my heart as a spy.

The world is a riddle.

The world is a plum.

The world is a shadetree-

some relief from the Sun.

“Whilst my Physitians

by their love are growne

Cosmographers, and I

their Map” said Donne.

Some go sally

from Parade Music

 

Some go sally on to Montreal,

Some go sally on the Hoodson,

Some trip trippingly to Gay Paris,

Some cook curry in Loondon.

Oh, the ladies they parade!

Oh, the gents they sweat!

It's all, or some, or none at all,

Or it ain't near over yet!

Singsong of Thumbs

from Parade Music

Ladies and gentlemen: the parade of days!

the music of scour and pail,

and diapering at night and dustpan work

to the rhythm of mending and failure.

Everyday is the day of slow decay

and cake reverts to crumbs

we collect to bake our cake today.

It's why we've got these thumbs.

Divine decrees with Bondo and grease

we manage to maintain.

We polish God's chains and axles and gears

rusting in God's rain.

Every stiff in this mob works the same job;

baker, mechanic, nurse.

It slips and we fix it, and the change of shift

is a traffic of pram and hearse.

Hop Scotch

from Parade Music

Terra Firma

Baleina? Sperma!

Pricks. Tricks. Nix.

Tertiary mastic,

Kanji acrostic,

creamery

dream of the

mousehole.

Why can't daddy pay the rent?

Popcorn, sodapop, cinders, flint.

Fancy lady, fancy shoes;

If you don't play you never lose.

Five,seven

nine,eleven.

Gimme silk,

Gimme satin,

Tout le'soirs

fin en matins!

Lowercase paradise

Sysco ice cream,

Imperial Soda (a lot like Moxie).

Roxy Music on a radio

(a lot like Moxie, really).

Right now without

a crimp. No new busted

transmission cooler

to cost me a bundle and set me back.

Never a slickster with the coin

of the realm; rather more of a talker

and former hothead.

Though age and advice have tempered the temper.

I'm playing pretty flat this year.

Blowing it, really, left and right.

So man, I love these small prizes,

these lowercase paradises.

This hot stoop for one:

some sun and time

to nurse this frozen

Imperial Moxie Sysco sodafloat.

A Visit to a Gallery

There's this trick I can do with my fancy schooling,

White skin and thrift-store Oxford

Ten minutes in he's pitching me Lichtenstein

A minor piece of monochrome silhouettes

We converse, briefly, on narrative art

and the graceful use of color

I know this won't sustain:I cannot game

the money bit and excuse myself

Heated dreams of my middle age:

lurched montage of women and girls

and real estate. Eager, dark haired

girls and a gargantuan yellow farm;

broad porched, hipped roof, spread

in cool wooden rooms and sheds

along a road in southern Maryland

lined with pines.

Storm Warning

A blowing white wall. My windshield
sweats off the ice and snow
Maybe ten miles an hour. Muffled tires
chuckle on the corrugated strip. I creep
left, back into an invisible lane.
I turn on the radio for reassurance.

The announcer reports Australia is flooded.
Bullsharks swim upriver into Brisbane's
streets, and snakes shelter on the second
floor of houses while cars float out
of garages and join refrigerators and recliners
and bullsharks, apparently: a surreal armada.

Its crazy out here.  Hide in your homes!
The world and its weather will do what it will.
It isn't safe, not on this road in the snow
invisible behind white billows.
Stay home on your sofa until it sails
out into a street full of sharks and snakes.

The ignorance of tons

Now the ridgeline is sharp-edged, purpled, flat,

featureless, matted upon the brighter sky.

That afternoon it seemed stippled and hatched

with bare trees against white. Last night it snowed.

Then, moonrise showed the ridge blackest beneath

a black sky. Just cresting over, sharp backlight

picked out four or five treetops in silhouette,

limbs detailed against a bright arc.

The moon rose free and blackened all, everything

black except white light and white flakes in the air.

Our walk will show it fuller, gullied, open

along the switchback trail, staired

by great fallen blocks.

Light's straight lines invent edges of the

thicknesses our hands might grasp

pretending an obverse world. Petals

our fingers will hardly acknowledge as

solid as stones to our sight. Which stones

weight my palm can heft I'll measure.

But those boulders' mass is all secret.

Sums my estimation makes cannot

move my body's ignorance of tons.

I'll never have them like I do

the taste of water.

Fat Tuesday Tanka

Plastic Jesus Christ
That I just found in my mouth.
Do I spit Him out?
I show everyone my prize:
King Cake's backward Eucharist.

The Feast of St. Francis

Watching songbirds wintering at the windowfeeder.

Money, again, on my mind.

Francis loved the poverty of animals,

who own only hungers,

every expectation exhausted within

their perfectly tailored lot.

Who are always as they are made

and die in the dress they were born in.

My daughter and I drove down

the highway one day last week

and along the road in an hour

saw seven hawks, still

on limbs or overhead looping circles:

watching to stoop, take and eat

some songbird.

Perched on orchids. Fed.

Long evenings quiet study of Persian calligraphy.

Genoese history. Latin. The theory of games.

Who can say with authority the birds,

exotic, ill-fit to these climes, resent the aviary?

Who but they? Perched on orchids. Fed.

Who say, in fact, nothing to us but themselves

serenade. Our joy accidental to theirs.

Greg's Service

Fumbling, at a loss,

those talking, those dumb

Why he went vague:

his habit, lies unmentioned

His friends, using, jumpy in their corner.

Others that knew him but not one another.

Lovers comparing their afterglows awkwardly

in his childless parent's home.

Promiscuous, faithless,

what deity exactly that might

take him from this crowd

was unclear.

He'd been Godless, beloved.

And now dead. All of us pressed

into a hot kitchen for a funeral

with no body, no grave,

no minister, no rite.

His ashes somewhere

in an urn.

Swimming the Quarry

I

I had heard as a child and never forgot

that the first people here had tickled for fish

slipping their hands, foxily rippling, in streams

and so tricked the trout right into their fists.

Scholarly, slow, I saw study as this tickling

in words for some true thing, alive

in all the clauses of textbook and banter.

II

That morning we swam the flooded quarry.

Pale ledges, ridiculously deep water

transparent and bright. The doctor and Greg

dove while we floated alongside our daughter.

Fish appeared and came on slowly as,

unseeing, she slapped the water. Grabbed at it

with small fists. Their progress was steady

and invisible. I turned to show her and was bit.

A tiny, implausible jolt. Disbelief, laughter.

The shining living thing found me

inconclusive. Removed itself to its mates.

III

We sat on the porch that warm night.

Sang to the little girl cautiously stalking

a toad that sporadically leapt, paused,

and sat on the path. We cheered on her hunting

and cheered when she had it, carefully cradled

in both hands. Tiny kicking efforts

to escape its gentle little cage.

She considered the options: prince or warts.

She had it then. Wild, real, caught.

In her life's short career

the finest thing she had done with her hands.

Stilted Delivery

Tonight the actors run the rehearsed lines

again. The same lines they have tried for weeks

to make stop and go like real speech.

As everyday words do. No rhymes

or devices to mar the flow of life portrayed.

on stage. In routine words they recite the show,

but it does seem as if just now

it occurred to them what needed to be said.

I have the same few thousand words

you do. Our expressions are unoriginal

(the frown, the slouch, surprise, a smile)

like the beautiful, fixed vocabulary of birds

or alphabet blocks. O is for orange.

Every toddler invents the same tower.

Each a private victory for its little builder:

Perfect, countless, duplicate lettered efforts.