the way I tell it

I read in the news about the father who had gone missing. He was riding his bicycle after breakfast, his wife had said, And was still not back. The printed words looked So commonplace, describing the incident as though it were just news.

I thought about how terrible it must be To be her, sitting in her kitchen, sipping lukewarm water, watching the phone, checking the yard, the garage, the bedroom as though he may have sneaked in while she was sipping. She is waiting to hear something, nobody to console her.

He had slipped from the grid, from the clutches of googlemaps or twitter feeds, There was nothing to do but wait. We lose our wallets and kick ourselves incessantly for our Ambivalence, our mindless stupidity. But what to do when we misplace a husband?

The prayers that echo into the heavens, genuflecting on the lap of God, are empty. We don’t even know what to pray for. Forty years of praying each meal, thanking Jesus for food, shelter, and children, And where is he, the man who prayed, and fathered, and cried and held hands, and chewed and swallowed so slowly, carefully, followed always by a sip of glassy ice milk, all without ever once losing eye contact with his lover?

I imagine him wandering on a distant ramble. Caught by the alluring sun in a field of black-eyed Susans. He is trying to leave, but he is overwhelmed by the folly and heather. He is a boy with a kite, his bicycle caught in the bramble-laden fence, His trodden path of crushed stems and stiff grasses extends to the hill.

A rescue worker will find the bike and follow the path. He will radio and more will follow, rushing through the buzz of crickets And grasshoppers, sweat building in the sunned meadow. I imagine the workers finding him asleep in the shade of that great Crab apple tree on the hill. He has been missing for an entire day, His wife is worried, workers are tired, and He is sleeping Amongst the black-eyed Susans In the rabbit meadow. The cotton weave of his collar is wilted in the summer air.

He is a smiling Rip Van Winkle He will return home alarmed and disoriented He will kiss his wife They will have pie for dinner And he will tell her about his dream And about the rabbit meadow.

In the story I read they did not mention the ice milk, And they did not look in the rabbit meadow.

untitled (11/09)

Distorted houses

In the street

Splash wet.

The splashes

Are colored

Like houses

With no walls

It is

November.

When Suddenly

When suddenly 

the dust cleared 

and someone somewhere 

cleared their throat,

nothing was left. 

The coughs echoed 

deep to the rhythm of 

disappearing flashes; 

the solemn songs, 

dissipated, cantankerous, 

shed their tears and bounced away 

through tunnels 

that looked and smelled like old things 

that grow ancient and legendary. 

The legends fade, 

the sun dips. 

Cowboys ride on. 

And somewhere there is dust 

settling on a new morning 

in a new town, 

And nothing is predictable 

anymore. 

There are skeletons

of heroes.

There are shadows

of hope.

And in those shadows,

we huddle,

buoyed by good,

sustained in whispers.

The Sudbury River

This river used to have turtles in it, my father said. He used to watch, with Jimmy Walworth. Policemen shot at their shells from the bridge with pistols. I imagine the slimed, Trodden leather tortoises, paddling their scarred shells home. Their turtle wives vexed with dread; too slow to be predictable. He looks at her through those old turtle eyes. They blink slow. And, somehow, the subtle tilt of head is enough. On the bridge, a shell casing, hot, fizzes. tumbles from the bridge, catches the dark night drifts floats rises noses down, settles ever quiet on the riverbed.

The Porch

There used to be a porch: brown wood, it would splinter.

The cat’s treasures, minks, mice, ermine, laid waste, fertile and soured, beneath old boards.

The railings were first to go, sodden, chunks they were turned to mush; each fell slow when we kicked them.

The world, teeming beneath the dead porch, breathed slow. The stench of earth crawling damp with worms and cardboard.

Mother saw it bountiful. The post holes seethed of lupine. Stones, smooth from being wet, lined green and edged the plot and lilies grew long in the shadow of the yellow house.

Time crawled, the sun rose round and we forgot; and where its shadow had been, the porch delivered thistle chives. And the cat concealed her antique vermin.