On the rides back I’d sometimes take
off my
Shoes, allowing the breeze to dance
Around my feet, all windows down
And the vents opened, too, as I
Moved alone through the darkness, no
Lights and often no other cars
As well. The roadway curves, rises
And falls, then curves again, all
the while
My foot in sensuous contact
With the rubber-clad pedal and
The cool air of movement holding
Off the weight of summer’s muggy
Nights. I drove and wondered how I’d
Missed this all my life. Now it’s
gone.
The city just isn’t the same.
Trail Hand
I lead with my better foot and
with a sure hand as well, with moves
that are at times graceful and in
most instances just good enough.
But as I pull away each time
my other hand will drag across
whatever I’m receding from,
so that it spills or falls sideways.
I’m always turning to look at
things that I crushed or tore or broke
with mouth and eyes agape. The truth
is that I’m clumsier than I look.
A Blessing from
Marie
On my last day at the program
a girl who it seemed had never
much liked me waved me over to
where she stood just before I was
to leave and raised her hand and
uttered a benediction
of some sort in Spanish, making
the sign of the cross in my face
and smiling as I’d never seen
her smile before.
I
I awake each day with an undesirable bedfellow:
lower-back pain – a tax on middle-age, or a divine
and chronic punishment for the bold move of
Homo erectus rising from the dirt. My battalion of
maladies also includes sore heels, sensitive teeth,
a malfunctioning gullet, and a ceaseless high-pitched
chime in both ears, not to mention recurring headaches
and an intestinal smash-up derby that can rev up at
any moment. Thetis has always held me close. As my
fifth decade ends, I must brace for the ailments, aches
and inflammations, as well as the procedural and
pharmacological treatments, which wait in anticipation
of my survival.
II
A hundred-legger greeted my middle-of-the-night
bathroom visit, provoking a chase that ended with
the already-wounded uninvited guest caught in a
narrowing gyre that promised no cooling shores; I
went back to sleep, but there have been others this
spring, the warming air summoning them from
beneath rocks, inside cellars, behind cabinets. The
ants, however, have yet to appear on the front steps
and the back porch, the sites of last summer’s two-
fronted war that I may not have won, but held to
a stalemate, keeping the marauders beyond my
thresholds. Cimex lectularius is the adversary that
kindles my anxiety now; having outlived poisons
and asteroids, I am doubtless no match.
III
The classroom rows are crooked, the jailhouse bars
are bent, the hospital beds are soiled, the stained-
glass windows are busted – and there is no conviction
in the fixes that are proposed. News reports are filled
with misbehaving teachers, cops, doctors, preachers
and hordes of elected officials; the streets are filled with
blowing trash and broken bottles; pedestrians walk over
sleeping indigents; anything that has a market can be
found for sale; the ignorant are whipped into hatred and
violence; the small-minded dominate national debate;
the most vicious rise to rule business and factions and
nations. Meanwhile, atop streetlights, a shutter fires
to keep drivers from beating red lights.
IV
Sidewalks are buckled and fractured by ambitious
tree roots; cracks in the asphalt playground are spouting
blades of grass, as are concrete seams all about, claimed
for an empire older, more powerful and more widespread
than any regaled in university tomes. The center folds
and the sides follow – the superficial shine is gone, the
order disrupted, the plan obliterated. In warmer climes the
kudzu creeps in from all sides, while ice sheets wax and
wane from the poles. From beneath and above waves of
superheated matter threaten to explode at any moment,
though they are just as likely to extinguish suddenly. Solar
flares, meteor strikes, cosmic dust, demon holes – stability
is just a myth of the moment.
I never suspected there’d
Be toxins unleashed from
The prompt critical mass
Of your myocardium.
Presence
She sits down on a curb beside
a fast food restaurant and sinks
her head into her hands and cries
while people pass with food and drinks.
I settle in beside her but
pause before I speak, so I can
attempt to figure out just what
words would help her to understand
that she possesses value that
cannot be measured by some lout’s
careless rejection of her heart,
but it’s not what I say that counts;
it is, instead, the fact that I
am there beside her on the ground
while the rest of the world goes by
without stopping or slowing down.
A man divorced from his beliefs
Must question every day his course
As one among the streams and trees
Of some as yet unmapped forest;
Bereft of legend and landmark
And with no sense of cardinal points,
He moves, weary and erratic,
Until one day his will gives out.
On the first warm afternoon of the spring,
my body needing more activity,
I drove to the public beach desiring
to glimpse the sky and walk next to the sea.
The forecast true, the winds came up and ran
Across the whitecapped waters to the shore
And with handfuls of needle-sharpened sand
Pelted people who had come out in scores.
A woman ran toward me in hot pursuit
of a dollar bill swept from her digits;
I held my ground, lunged for the passing loot,
but it zigzagged by and I just missed it.
And there, tangled, leaning against the wall
A couple kissed, oblivious to all.