Poetry School
My mother held up the empty snowsuit,
boots and all, she had husked me of,
and made it dance on the kitchen floor,
clippity-clop, and sang this rhyme:
Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,
went to bed with his trousers on,
one shoe off, and one shoe on,
diddle diddle dumpling, my son John.
She shook out one boot at the right time.
It was only a shell, without a head,
mittens for hands, and my name was not John,
but that was myself that jumped and danced,
that was me in Poetry School.
Communal Stockings
My sister says, when we were young,
a poor woman sometimes came to the door
and asked to borrow our mother’s stockings—
nylon stockings— to go into town.
That was the respectable way to go,
and our neighbor, who was about 25
and whose husband beat her,
didn’t have any, but our mother did.
We don’t know whether she danced in them,
or carried on else-wise, say, off and on,
but since she came to the door more than once,
it would seem our mother complied.
Now, many years later, I’m obliged to report:
Mum was some kind of communist.
Edict And Prayer
Our Mother,
who art in the kitchen,
frying us an egg,
Thou will be done,
we hope, when we get there,
else our ire be higher.
Give us this day
our buttered toast,
as we descend hurrying,
and take from us later,
if not from our hands,
the laundry, of course,
and lay on us lavishly
big lunches,
scarves, etcetera,
as we hit the road
to Importance.
Make no mistake, Mum,
thine is the kitchen,
the cellar and the drudgery,
work without end. Amen.
Trying To Get Mum In Perspective
I’d like to think of her, even once,
except in relation to me,
a being intact and functional,
not simply concerned to help me,
comfort me, feed me, rest and love,
so convinced of my goodness,
herself a mere help
to find whatever good I might be,
at any time, laying down her work,
that I, her first and foremost work…
I’d like to think of her, just once,
without my name upon her lips,
loving me more than I loved myself.
If I had known she existed too,
as a person with appetites, fears and ideas,
struggles other than my own struggles,
if I'd ever thought she was other than I,
I might have tried to marry her.
Making Up
When I was about ten, perhaps feeling neglected
for four younger siblings, though I couldn’t have said so,
or even known it, I told my mother I was running away.
I said this good-naturedly,
and she replied good-naturedly, OK.
Then I went up the road half a mile, to Dogpatch,
which is what we called it since moving out.
That was farther away than usual for me,
and I stayed till dusk, when my friends went in.
When I got home the lights were on.
Mum was scrubbing the floor and crying.
She hugged me hard and I cried too.
We were close ever after.
Dear Mum,
The sun has warmed a brown coat of paint
on this picnic table in Quebec,
and the lunch you gave us flows
eternally from the paper bag,
like the magic porridge pot.
The kids are playing by the forest
and Carolyn and I don't contemplate
the coming grey Atlantic:
the road develops only where you are
and where you were,
the buoyant emptiness of travel.
It moans rubberly beside us,
a sad monster that leaves me free
to eat chocolate cookies and think of you.
His Mother's Birthday
His mother is born on the day the sun
comes back to the northern hemisphere.
Spring and his mother can hardly be noticed then,
the Earth still twisting in the fact of winter.
But the equinox is past, and however quietly,
Spring and his mother have arrived.
There are blossoms and warm days to come,
astonishment at the marvel she is.
Mum And Dad Parting
My mother and father almost never
confided about their marriage,
but a few months before she died of cancer,
they shared a little of their routine
as we sat in the kitchen, drinking tea,
the atmosphere, as it is among friends,
and the subject, our mortality.
She said they basically lived their lives
as they always had, however she cried
if he criticized.
He said that got him started too.
Sketch
Three months after his mother died he saw her ghost in a London deli: had not sat down when a woman came in, old, small, poor and decrepit. She approached and put her hand on his side. He relaxed and allowed their eyes to meet. They stood, not speaking, then he turned away, because of her need and to avoid being touched, but watched in a mirror as she went to the counter, stole a sandwich and walked out. Congratulating the quick old witch, he thought: Who, hungry, wouldn't steal? And who could be more deserving? She was practically a ghost of a person, a rag ship, floating around London. Yet hadn’t he just denied her touch, and turned away despite liking it? As he tried to recall her face, he could remember only his mother’s.
Sketch
Mum would be 94 today, so light you might tie a string to her wrist to keep her from blowing away. Not being here and yet being held in memory, she remains ours, a virtual treasure— her eyes, the clearest, deepest, earnest, smiling brown you have ever seen; her voice, an even, loving tone, encouraging. Memory is what you sometimes use to feel right, act right— an anchor of truth that keeps your self from blowing away.
Home (Newfoundland)
Mid-July,
the sky starred,
the moon full,
the window open,
the trees growing,
the river rushing,
the bed resting,
the wife sleeping,
the pillow propping
the head knowing
the mountain looming,
day coming—
The only living
I can imagine
is here,
and only here.
Waking On Saturday
The voices arrive as faces in the remote bedroom,
conversation between his wife and daughter
eating toast in the kitchen, only their tones
leavening his consciousness from sleep.
The room admits a summer morning,
vague with promise,
the sense of Saturday, free time.
His eyes are yet the only force
carrying his mind from the pillow to sense,
the wood ceiling, thick rafters,
the body left to know its rest in loose bedding,
muscles weighing the idea of movement.
Then the rain begins, benignly on the felt:
the infinite keys of a soft, cosmic typewriter,
invisible ink on themes of life.
He likes the slow beginning.
He Has Spent Hours
He has spent hours
gazing on the beauty of his wife,
and child, a girl, and child, a boy,
and revelled in the fortunes of his life.
He has spent hours
staring at the charm of his abode,
its fire and garden, barn and bed,
his haven by a gravel road.
He has spent hours
peering into Newfoundland,
its rocks and mosses, water, woods,
this miracle in Time's diminished sand.
He has spent hours
revelling in good fortune,
and loved himself for living
just this ounce of wisdom.
Sprout
If you have a child you can let it grow beans
and get such a kick out of seeing the sprout
seeing the sprout, seeing the sprout
yourself is great.
You can show the little thing anything
and get such a charge
out of seeing your charge
seeing anything, it is new to you too.
All you need to be fairly happy
is seeing these things you could show a child,
alone, if you have an open mind,
redoubled if you have a child.
Sketch
The happiest day of his life was as if it hadn't happened, or happened twice. At four A.M. he stopped the alarm, got dressed and went outside in the dark, intending to go to the lab. He scraped the snow and ice off the car, looked at the driveway, reconsidered shoveling, and went back inside to bed. With an arm around his pregnant wife he felt the baby kick and tumble. In that pocket of warmth, he was as content as the fetus. And when next he woke, had already lived, and had yet to live, a day worth living.
Sketch
He had been so long without his children that seeing them was like a brilliant portrait in a grey foyer. They made a barbecue and chased each other under huge, hurried clouds. He ended this at their bedtime, and they cried in surprise and disbelief that they could not change his mind. He was Johnson on Vietnam. When they were in bed, consoled with kisses, wrapped in yarns and ready for sleep, he came himself to the edge of tears. Like a child he wondered why they hadn't run forever when they could.
Sketch
One day, in a good mood, he set out to check his mail. The walk took him along his gravel road in warm sunlight. He had let his children go swimming an hour earlier and forgotten them. The road passed above some bushes and he heard their voices and looked down to see them returning along a path from the woods. They were wet and shining in the sunlight amid glossy leaves, laughing and talking childish fun. When they saw their father on the road above them, they squinted into the sun and said hello with more amusement. The shock of joy that went through him then was as great as his anguish could have been had he learned they drowned.
Mysterious Origins
My mother said, when she was a boy,
and I objected, and we laughed,
and whatever it was she recommended,
I probably did, and was well advised.
‘Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot—
I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun…’
Proves that Emily too was a boy.
And with these two compelling examples,
I tell my daughter: When I was a girl…
imparting, no doubt, more perspective.
Life Compared To A Sack
Life is like a burlap sack you put things in,
and some use space, like oranges and rice,
so nice that much of what else goes in,
you think, Why wasn't that oranges and rice?
But it wasn't and, heavy as raw meat,
bones and all, the sack bleeds through.
The bones being sharp, the meat, red,
the sack gets holes in it, and unsightly.
Later on you go to a graveyard
and look over the guilt monuments.
How we loved them, you say!
And that was once in the bleeding sack.
You put a tombstone in your sack,
which, from then on, is going nowhere.
You can't lift it. Sit down, clown.
She’s all abroad. Oh! How we loved them!
You make this your home, and it's worthy of you.
Your whole family, kids and shit,
who knows what all, you’re losing track,
still trying to lift it in middle age,
stinking carrion, wet rice, granite, rotten oranges.
Crawl in, son, peel an orange. Cook up some cow.
Clean a bit of that rice for weddings.
Make the piece of granite your floor.
You're sacked.
Two Women
Almost all I know I learned
from two good women,
my mother and wife,
one short, the other, tall,
both, however, peaches in all,
Both peaches, and both sages,
peaches and sages, peaches and sages,
agreeable in every imaginable way,
tastes, looks, the works.
From my mother I learned attitudes:
calm, slow, deliberate, ridiculous,
lunatically funny and kind.
From my Mrs., I learned the ways of the world,
nature, information, science,
how to find my way down the road,
especially to and from the bank.
I miss them now that I’m on my own,
comfortable, as they would have wished,
trying to make sense of everything past.
Is it possible I make things up?
Conditioning
This, he thinks, is conditioning,
the excitement he feels
in the sound of a zipper
in a dark room, on a soft boot,
implying the ideal leg;
or a long, delicately humming zipper,
snaking on a light dress,
the music of good memory.
He thinks when the zipper goes into a valley,
maybe in the small of her back,
or between the calf and ankle,
that there it moves him most,
as a brook might, a thirsty stag.
And after that, the brook stops,
a lake of silence, only a zephyr
rustling the trees, her dress,
the water beckoning.
By The Frog Pond
My wife took me once to a frog pond
and showed me the fun of it, all that was there,
slippery and pretty, slimy and live,
things I would never have seen alone,
but would have walked by, unknowing.
Standing there in sunshine with her,
peering, pointing, talking, enjoying,
we might have been like a mother and child,
or brother and sister, or two little friends
going home to fuck.
On My Wife’s Snoring
My wife of late, my old wife,
my preferred wife and the wife of my life,
through thirty-seven years of varied delight,
has become my Muse, and she snores.
I wouldn’t sleep in another bed
for all the tea and virgins and opiates
and exotic excitement there ever was,
unless pretty sure she wouldn’t find out.
For she draws me to her like leaves of paper
blown about in a breezy room
and come to rest by a thickness planer
at work on a contrary hickory plank.
All is going well with the feed,
till she nears the end of that hard board
and hits a knot that adds chatter—
a Kalashnikov firing a short burst.
After this, a moment of silence,
still as the grave. The ears open wide.
Then follows a powerful, deep-rooting snort,
such that, had it been made by an actual hog,
It might have unearthed a whole pot of potatoes,
or perhaps uprooted a small tree,
or opened sky onto treasures of truffles
and won any number of prizes pigs win.
Through all of this I am pure patience,
wakeful, diligent, at work on the poem.
This is not the kind of snoring, you know,
that will cease by my saying, Tusk, tusk.
Nor is it even worth broaching at breakfast.
The best one can do is to search for words
that, left lying around, may win some sleep.
Oh! Winsome sleep! Oh! Winsome sleep!
New Swear Word
My grandsons taught me,
and here it is: butt-crack hole.
May it please you daily.
The nine-year-old was sitting on the couch, reading
as his five-year-old brother stood on his head
beside him, his rear end near the elder’s face.
Their conversation turned to odors.
The rest, as they say, is anatomy, or philology.
I plan to use it figuratively, as in: Frank,
Why are you acting like a butt-crack hole?
Unsunset
Tonight I saw the sun unset
as we took off west from Chicago,
changing slowly from just a sliver
to about three-quarters, possibly more,
when we climbed to thirty-odd thousand feet.
The effect was human and temporary,
but the sun, all the same, was itself, aglow,
as striking as anything ever seen anywhere
naturally, an ember.
When we leveled off and it finally sank,
it lay a bright bar of fire before it,
not just a normal region of sunset,
but sky as red as the sun had been.
That persisted for some time.
My son is going to be treated for cancer.
In The Hospital
As he lay in his hospital bed and I approached
to say good night, it seemed he might
have liked me to give him a kiss on the mouth,
but instead I kissed his cheek and said:
You’re hot as a pistol.
He said: Am I?
I said: I’ll see you in the morning.
Then he was left to face a long night:
with the facts of cancer and cancer drugs,
the hospital room as stark as torture,
the IV dripping away like a sentence,
checks on his vitals every thirty minutes.
It would not be, in any way, restful.
My own little son, now a fully grown man!
I wished I had given him a better kiss.
Musings on Existence
One of the better thoughts I think,
though I don't claim its invention,
is that I am part of a purposeful troop,
a family, movement or team,
thereby more than myself.
It had seemed preposterous previously
to think there was any purpose to life.
But consider the following metaphor:
Is there any purpose for the life of a cell?
Yes, to help make an organ.
No one needs proof that organs have purpose.
Then, Is there purpose above and below?—
Is there purpose for a whole person?
It seems to me things strive to be,
and collectively, to be more.
I know that molecules, proteins and people,
in general, have no idea what they’re doing.
I didn’t, for one. But take my word,
based on revised and updated feeling:
this thought is one of the best.
