The Change

I stopped being able to write decent poetry a long time ago. Something happened, I guess. Perhaps I did not feed the Muse, did not make it known that I was available. Some people lose other things in the same way: love, opportunities, careers. I've lost some of those too. But the ability to write decent poetry hurts the most.

But, that's the time of day and the glass of wine talking. The poem here is almost decent, I think--simple in language and theme, a bit too similar of things I've written before. But it's nice to have written something, isn't it? Anyway, this one floated around my brain for several weeks before, once again, a writer-friend gave me the little push I needed to put it down somewhere. "Change" works on a couple of levels here, and it's the idea that I started with. In fact, the last line is how the whole poem began. The idea of having a sister in the poem appeared early on, too, as did Coltrane.
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The Change

During our summer walks my sister and I learned

to whisper the names of landmarks so that when

the day came we could find our own way home.

Our father, always several paces ahead of us, knew

each alleyway, knew who was on the other side of

each closed apartment  door and each opened window.

We learned the names, too: Johnson, Kominski, at least

three Smiths. During one summer’s evening humidity

the old man stopped, so we stopped. He tilted his head

upwind toward something new. “He’s trying to play Coltrane,”

our father said. “Listen.” So we listened: not the Top 40 we

spun in the basement after school while the humidifier worked,

but to indefinable rhythms we could not yet catch. “He needs

a new reed,” our father said. “But he’s getting it. Hear that? 

Hear how he held that note for almost long enough?”

My sister and I shifted our stance, ready to move on as he

tapped  his foot just enough so that a passerby might notice.  

The sun was nearly gone, and its light revealed the hidden

grayness deep in our father’s hair. He looked down at us,  

gauged that light against our bedtime. “Another minute,”  

he said. “A few more  measures. Just give me those and we’ll

all go home.” He turned his good ear back toward  the window

and the failing reed. “Get ready,” he said. “Listen for the change.”

Insomnia

Pretty much the basics of being awake too much at night.



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Insomnia

Sunlight’s refraction through the cracked

kitchen window  this morning;

the water needs of rye and fescue weighed

against a possibility of drought;

that my hip now aches no matter the weather,

and sometimes my heart skips beats;

my wife’s nighttime sighs and her breath

on my bare shoulder;

my youngest son shifting in his bed

as his brother turns the front lock,

and the dog trotting down the hallway

when the door is pulled softly shut;

that my father would have been seventy-two

this year, my mother, seventy-one;

the moon's deliberate arc across our skylight

on this, the first night of autumn.

Surprise

Might have stolen a line from someone when I wrote this one many years ago.

Surprise

A trained eye can isolate

stars even during such in-between

phases, separate them from

a schooner’s mast spiked

into uncommitted dusk.

But someone should have mentioned

how dusk might linger like this,

how daylight and a diminished

horizon might refuse one another

as easily as they refuse the half-moon.

Even the ocean seems unsure: five-hundred

feet below, a slack tide barely pulses

toward the line of seaweed strands,

distressed driftwood, diminished legs of crabs.

From this bluff, from this bed of clump

grass, only that single light

on the schooner’s mast has purpose,

an unnatural beacon any eye would find

until finally even it is directed

away, perhaps into the surprise

of strong water, into what becomes

of dusk.

Lost

Yet another old one. Because, really, all of them are old.


Lost

Shadows cut imprecisely into

the riverbank.  Rain

like fingers reaches beneath

the current and pulls different

water to the surface.  Somewhere

in this river’s mud are footprints—

only hours old but a path

back to familiar topography. 

Waiting beneath conifers

that betray a cloudburst’s

passing, I try to predict an age

at which men understand how thunder

begins as silence, how foolishness

is wisdom’s sly twin.

 

Catch and Release

Knee deep in a flush of late spring snowmelt, you slide

the barbless hook out of the trout’s translucent lip then cradle

its body at a forearm’s length in water cold enough

to pull breath from your fingertips. Early season trout

are greedy, and the first time we fished together

you worked a gullet-snag for ten minutes, all the while

cursing the fish’s lack of discipline. But this fish, its flesh

cleanly pierced, earns whispers of praise—

coos of love you speak into a new year of catch

and release. 

Pennies

Another old one.

 

Pennies

Of the many things I had to explain was lying

motionless, pennies balanced on my closed eyes. 

My mother voiced annoyance as my father stroked

his chin and asked about this fascination with death.

His shirt smelled of butane—a working man’s cachet.

I said I was fascinated with nothing but thought

we should rehearse being still and learn the weight

of those coins, that if I died before he did I wanted

to have practiced everything.  His lips opened and closed. 

My mother gasped and left the room.  I inhaled

butane as my father stared into me, his fear so strong

that Death itself would have paused mid-grasp.

This is an old one--written in graduate school and submitted to the "Room of One's Own" poetry contents. There's more to the story, of course, but we'll just keep that a little secret.

Going Crazy

1.

I leave to escape fragments

of previous conversations

I cannot swear to ever having.

It is the warm gin that affects me,

I tell myself, or too much poetry

or aftershocks from a single

mescaline overdose. Nothing more.

At the water’s edge I strip

and float into the cold,

fogged-over Pacific, wondering

if a man could drift to the

Cape of Good Hope with nothing

but skin and survive.

2.

Once I looked up from the Equator

and wondered why the sun seemed

no different, why I could not feel

a shift in polar influence.

But I can tell you water dripped

from a faucet, though it spins

with time when it reaches the sink,

vanishes just the same.

3.

What are the visible signs

of going crazy? I have asked

the round-faced postman,

who listens, and, once,

the milkman, who does not.

Tell me, what will I lose

first: my gait? bowel-control?

the simple ability to hold my hand

steady, like this? I think of my

three children, sweat beaded

on their cheeks, watching

my firm grasp loosen digit by

digit until they slip away and fade

into the common American blizzard

of apologies for drunk fathers.

  

4.

I know a man can stay afloat

a lifetime through only occasional,

fluid sweeps of one arm, forcing

the head back and trying

to remember to breathe. So little

is required: it is instinct;

it is years of lessons and learning

to find a way up through clear

water to sunlight. Yet,

I drift in the moonless

tide. This is fine, I say,

and dream of the breathless

life beneath the surface rising

with open mouths to consume

me, to drink from even

the first star.

Diving into the Wreck

With nothing new or original to say, I am taking the coward's way out and stealing from someone else--in this case, someone famous and, as of a couple days ago, dead: the poet Adrienne Rich.

I first came across Rich's poems as a just-out-of-the-navy college student who felt more comfortable reading books than speaking to people. She isn't my favorite female poet (Lucille Clifton and Marge Piercy rank above her), but her poem "Diving into the Wreck" did become a favorite: It's a great example of a poem that not only describes, but also leads.

Here's a passage:

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.

Read the entire poem.

Those Hands

You compare your soft, untested hands to your father's as you
reach into the closet and retrieve the narrow box that holds
a warehouseman's simple economy: pay stubs and tax returns
as products of swollen knuckles, of callouses that pulled lint
from denim pockets.

Each year you would see him sitting at the maplewood table,
a puzzle of receipts and forms arranged and ordered,
the typed solemnity of their officiousness waiting for summations
carried over from bits of scrap paper.

Those hands: hungry for work as they pressed ink into the very
paper you now touch as you weigh the profit and loss
of letting the box fall into the same bin as this week's empty milk
cartons and newsprint.

Afterthoughts

Though I did not read especially well, I was comforted by fine food and company beforehand, and then accompanied by a good reader throughout. A couple of the poems I made it through were roughly unscathed, while others were simply roughed up. Still, welcomed by good, friendly people and surrounded by various and interesting books, I muddled and mumbled my way through 18 minutes of poetry. It was good practice, and should I do something similar again, I will perhaps feel less uncomfortable.

For those who showed up to listen and might drop by here to read, my thanks; for those who invited, fed, and joined me, my appreciation; for those who applauded, my amazement.

The Words Come In, the Words Go Out

In just a few days I'll be sharing the stage with Shawn, an accomplished poet and up-and-coming Dancing Wu Li Master, for a night of poetry. This will be my second time on such a stage, and I can't honestly say that I will be comfortable. I don't socialize well (genetic, I'm sure), and being the object of attention even for 15 minutes is not something I look forward to. Or, for you sticklers, is not something to which I look forward.

But, things are as they are....

So, I've been spending some time going through my meager collection of poems and have found that, really, I have written one, maybe 2 poems in the last 5 years. No, really--from words to phrases to themes, not much has changed over the years. Overall, the themes seem to be growing old, family, and gardening, with a bit of insomnia thrown in; the main landscapes seem to be my backyard and the ocean, though the mountains do make a couple of appearances. My favorite of the lot is "Going Crazy," which was written many years ago and which is the only poem for which I've actually earned money--enough to pay for my final semester of graduate school. I do not think, though, that it will make the playlist this time, for it is not an especially happy poem, and now seems a bit dated. "First Poem for my Father," one, for several reasons, I find difficult to read all these years later, will also be left at home, though I think I'll regret this choice. I did share it the last time I read, and I sweated through the entire thing.

I am still not sure which poems will make the playlist, but I'll have a better idea tomorrow after Shawn steers me one way or another with some of them. Here's a rather insignificant one that was, literally, inspired by a Krispy Kreme doughnut. This might be the first one I read, just to start with something short.

Summary

Could you in seven lines summarize your life?
Not the given, crusted ends, but the soft
and creamy center that was a brush of long
grass against your young legs, or drifting alone
to Manila, or the first time a woman
said she loved you, and you believed it?
What could you tell us?

Of course it might be pulled from the starting lineup at the last minute....