Guttering

One more poem in the last breath of the year then.
A tiny ark for all that was as the rain begins.
Here are all the nights, spent matchstick days
huddled together:

this poem is the silky ribbon to bind them.

The chopsticks I carved,
the books I bought to read in an appropriate chair
the new scar on my left palm
the letters from the boys locked up -
they are in here.

All the steps I've paced in the basement,
and every mile of sidewalk I covered these
twelve months
are in here.

My kittens, Della and Winter, are back from
their new families to rub up against this poem's legs,
and here's their own windowsill of a stanza
to nap on for as long as they want -
welcome home girls.

All my own hours waiting, nose at the window,
those great mouthfuls of silence
are in here.

The family that rented me the room,
they're all here playing cards and still
wondering about me down in the basement,
the man living under their stairs.

My new tattoo, the two words scrawled over
my heart, they're in here.
The bleeding has stopped and all
the letters have some new skin.

Every ounce of every laugh I made or heard
this year - you can't have a poem like this without
all the laughter you can find -
all of it is in here.

A pant cuff of beach sand,
a wineglass of rainwater from the woods,
one silver firework, two purple ones,
and every hot, midnight prayer -
yes, all of that is in here too.

The stone I scoured the city for,
the perfect one the nice short jeweler brought
out of the safe, shipped from overseas,
that brilliant rock that took the long boat ride
back to Egypt - I hated to see it go,
so I'm putting it in here too.

And as for all the moves
I should have made,
things I might have said
that would have made a difference
to a stranger or the people I know -
I've already piled and torched them,
them and their shadows.
They are the smoke you smell.
It's the only thing to do
with what we didn't.

The kisses - the good ones and
the tipsy ones the sad ones and
all the harmless little ones that led to
more good ones -
I'm leaving those out.

They are free to drift on their warmly pressed
wings, flitting around this jar full of things forever,
just to brighten the place up.

Which brings me at last to you.

You, who aren't in here either.
You who won't be bound anywhere,
especially in any poem I can order.
You who have slipped off somewhere,
gone again, breaking into next year
early perhaps, or stealing into some salty,
sweetache dream I will sit up in bed from
sometime late in the second week of June.

Grey

Gray is sometimes a sign for what's knocking
at the door, what's coming on:

some hairs at the temple:
middle age.
some low clouds in a slate sky:
snow.

It's the color for all that's forgettable too,
like the first two stanzas of this poem.

Or all the days that seem to be the same
day over again, looking back, sardined
together in our memory and our stories:
"...the two years after he left,
when I was drinking bad..."

Our brains, all those folds and coils are
grey matter, not yellow matter,
for a reason, I'm sure.

Gray is what happens to white when
it gets just a little bit dirty.
Or it's black, trying to clean itself up.

It's the light, fading up slow,
or dying a minute at a time.

Grey is the question color,
the hue of the blood for every
mystery that ever was.

It's also Indecision and Weakness,
Mystery's old imposters,
poised in trench coats
by a lampost in a thin fog,
trying to fool you.

Grey is lukewarm at best,
but usually cold.

It's ashes settling on what burned,
it's the dull nickle in your pocket,
or all the stony eggs in the river's bed,
or the cat, greeting me in her silent house.
It's waves and wet sand under a full June moon,
it's early morning prayers that rise and curl like
smoke over this table where the cue ball smacks
the far rail, kisses the 9-ball sweetly now,
sends it loping towards a side pocket,
some way out of here.

---------

3.15.12

Gray

Gray is sometimes a sign for what is

knocking at the door.

A few hairs at the temple:

middle age.

A giant fist of cloud across the bay:

thunderhead.

It is the color for all that is forgettable too,

like the first two stanzas of this poem. 

Or all the small and ordinary days 

unmarked by tragedy or great joy:

a great school of sardine days now curing

in a lonely, dusty coil of your brain.

Gray is what happens to white when

it gets just a little bit dirty.

Or it's black, trying to clean itself up.

It is the first gasp of every morning sky

and the death rattle of all our sunsets.

Gray is the question color,

the hue of the blood for every

mystery that ever was.

It is also Indecision and Weakness,

Mystery's old impostors,

poised in trench coats

by a lampost in a thin fog,

trying to fool you.

Gray can be lukewarm but mostly is cold.

It is ashes settling on what burned

or all the stony eggs in the river's bed

it is the dull nickel in your pocket

or the cat, greeting me in her silent house

it is early morning prayers that rise and curl like

smoke over this table where the cue ball smacks

the far rail, kisses the 9-ball sweetly now and 

sends it loping toward a side pocket

some way out of here.

Green

Consider the pale stem of the shamrock
bent, slight, in a sprawling bed of clover.

Green is for things alive,
things in the heavy thick of July,
and the color for things come back
again too --
what our dead limbs can't hold off but
welcome in song after the world melts.

Green is the boy's infield grass,
and his outfield too, stretching all the way
to his warning track, when life had neatly
painted lines and some rules to play by.

Green is what rooted the first time you
saw her with him.

Envy begins there:
a small emerald seed unfolding,
death, blooming evergreen,
piney in our heart's forest.

It's the light of the city we come
rattling and shaking to at the end of
our road, our tin bodies, straw heads,
and uncertain tails twitching in the
hot, late summer air
ripe with all our heavy questions,
our hopes, plump as pears,
and desire, pregnant on the vine.

Back

The old man at the top of the mountain
tended the meadows here at the bottom
with his tractor.

He graded the road that winds up to
his house, too.

Mowing, making the road smooth again, are
better than sleep to him, he says.

Peaceful.

We thought he was dead:
feeding tubes, months in the hospital,
but he surprised us, maybe even himself,
and he's back.

It was his mountain, he bought it
all and sold the pieces over the years,
to family mostly, he tells me over coffee
this morning when I come knocking
uninvited with my walking stick
and questions.

Hawaii, he says, that's where
he'd like to go when he gets
his strength back.

If this was poker, I believe I'd
have all his chips.

He isn't sure what's next,
or what he thinks about God,
or if he knows, he won't say.

Roger, not yet fifty, cranks
the tractor, hitches the blade
for grading and moves down the
steep incline of the road.

It's Spring, and no time for dying.

Those islands, he says,
were like paradise.

He won't look at me now,
but stares out the bay window,
off the mountain that was his,
farther on, searching,
his eyes glazing with something.

I want to go back, he says.

Later

I'm trying to imagine Lazarus,
the day he walked out of the
tomb in his death robes,
stinking rotten and feeling
his lungs go back to work,
his heart, back to work,
the bloodrush and the
sweet daylight and that voice,
calling: his own name
hammering in his ears.

I'm thinking of him that night
after the party was over,
laying there with the wife
and the quilts piled up
and the fire gone to coals.

I bet she never held him
so tightly, so tenderly.

How could they have not
made love that night?
The body gone cold, now
flushed with living and
loving again.

Did she remember, that night,
just for a moment,
her husband without the breath,
remember him as corpse
as she stared into that face,
laced her fingers with his?
Did she shudder?
Did he notice, know her thoughts?

Afterwards in the long silence,
their breathing measured
and together again in that
late hour, he confessed:

"I don't want to sleep tonight."

"Tell me a story," she said.