Opened all the windows but the house still smells like sleep. Outside, some children communicate through primal screaming, a clash of sticks and gratings. Out for the summer, what do they care about the intrinsic sadness of Sunday morning, that there’s still some time yet — never meaning what it means to mean: for them meaning nothing, with age meaning regret.
This is the most unsettling sky: A white sky. A dead sky; blank– even the birds roll right off. Bright, it admits that it is day. No more than that.
Somewhere up North a high school band drilled across the field, the retort of a snare, the pounding of a bass drum muffled by distance, floating high above the maples, the garden placid save for a man shouting at his child, or his dog, it took all of us a while to actually listen to the words: Help, I need help. And then we ran, stirrup hoes and trowels in hand like some volunteer army, […]
Marsh Island under a clear sky, the power boats come in close to shore, your dog, afraid of the bridge grating, jumped into the water, and you weren’t quite sure how to get her back. Real fearis nothing to laugh at, but instinct– you askedwhy I was smiling, it’s because I know too wellthis urge to bail, to go over the side and swim for shorewhile bystanders point and shout unhelpful advice.
Thin envelopes are always trouble. (At first I wrote it as envelops). I suppose that is also true, feeling the terse embrace of bad news.
What sinks down must also rise. My garden is dry, the soaker hosehas sprung a leak. I’ve almost forgottenthe curve of your cheek, distinctivewhile smiling, (a cheek of all things?)The garlic has sent out scapes, two radishes are bolting, and all day everyonehas been singing, the strangest thing.Even the workman in the empty apartmentnext door could not refrain, a few lines of some Spanish pop song that I don’t knowbut now find myself humming.
Salvation in cartography. The dictates: paper is better, preferably bought at a ramshackle gas station where a grimy kid tries to sell you a rock while you hand her parents cash because the pumps are antique because you are in the middle of California nowhere during a burning season and all the other stations have sealed up their tanks not that you’ve seen any this far out and are a mile away from hitting empty. Arterials, arterioles– […]
A thunderhead of gnats rolled in along the shoreline,a black roil of flight. Otherwisethese days are limpid, roses wilting in the heat, and also climbing up the walls.
And twenty years later, home is stilla moving target.
I am unsure of the rationale of memory: Why, just now did I recall the way my mamawused to microwave fleas she found on the dog? How can I still see kudzu clamor over the carport with its smart sedan, sense grayness under old, old oaks? Of all things flea-murder starts the flood: a scabby cockroachin the night; the sweetness ofthe dining room curtains; thunder, spring frogs, lightning bugs. I’d never seen them before, never had […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 