COUPONS

In those days, our parents didn't spend

the better part of the afternoon reading stories

of local kidnappings and bank robberies,

nor the president's plans for another far-off war;

no one bothered with the crossword puzzle

or asking where all our fathers had gone, or why.

What mattered most was clipping coupons 

for all household things imaginable -- fifty cents off

laundry detergent, fifteen cents off toilet paper,

dyed pink or blue, or buy-one-get-one-free 

for the generic brand puffed rice cereal.

We mixed our milk from powder, a gray-blue 

substance which reminded me of bone,

and of chalk-dust at the end of the school day.

Those coupons, that secret language of

nickels and dimes, transcribed on paper so fine

that you could rub it all but away between your fingers, 

inevitably found their way into 

our mothers' oversized purses, clipped

neatly together, pulled out and pondered, traded

the way we boys traded baseball cards.

Which is to say that we managed somehow,

all of us; we entered each far-fetched sweepstakes,

and all of those wars, we paid for those too.

THE SHADOWS OF CHILDREN ON SWINGS

Their shadows have become entangled,
their limbs thrown flat against a broad wall
of sunlight, rising and rising, as if they were never
coming down again, as if flight and motion
were as essential as their own breath and blood,
these groaning knots of metal releasing them,
unharmed, into the open expanse of air.
They are tied, in this moment, only to the sky,
their bird-like bodies suddenly beyond our reach,
the chains holding them having become
ladders, lengthening ropes thrown into a future
unseen, but strong enough to hold them,
the shrieks of their laughter a language
of energy, easily understood between them.
Their shadows have become entangled,
their voices converging into one, demanding
only this day, this world, or nothing at all.

GHAZAL FOR MY BROTHER ON HIS FIFTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY

Even your photos now rush by, receding in a blur.

Only the young will tell you that life is long.

It's four below today, earth crunching underfoot;

your grave is everywhere, your memory long.

Do we measure time merely by its absence?

In winter we can see that our breath is not so long.

The forest reminds us that it's ok to be lost,

though there must be a reason we came along.

We'll never know the last time for anything.

I cross the room slowly, my daughter grows long.

If there is no time, there is none to be lost,

and love has been holding us all along.

THE NOTE

My brother and I never said I love you

to each other. Not in the three decades or so

we were in this world together.

We were guys, after all, and guys --

at least the ones we knew of -- joking,

mumbling, and cursing their way

through each day at school, or gazing

cool and distant from the flickering canvas

of a movie screen -- just didn't do that.

When I was a teenager, being shipped by plane

to our ailing mother fives states away,

he walked with me to the boarding gate

at Sea-Tac, surprising me by slipping a piece

of paper, neatly folded and creased,

from the cellophane of his cigarette pack,

and placing it calmly into my hand.

"Read this on the plane," he said quietly,

as though its contents were something covert,

instructions to be burned upon reading.

But his words, painstakingly printed in all caps,

were simple and direct, words which

he could not speak but had, I imagined,

carried from place to place within himself,

until he was certain they were right;

I, too, have spent the better part of a lifetime

trying and failing to find the right words --

sometimes even one -- circling, eventually, back

to the source of whatever needed saying,

and everything that never did.

MY MOTHER AFTER HER SECOND STROKE

When I call her on her eighty-sixth birthday, her words

come out slanted, complete within themselves, 

but unattached to any discernible subject or reference point. 

They rise like invisible threads into the air, circling, 

lingering, then going their separate ways. 

Sometimes she pauses, longer than expected,

as though trying to re-enter the doorway of thought. 

Sometimes a sound takes the place for a word or phrase. 

Her speech has become a palimpsest of sorts, 

her stories overlapping in time, ignoring the rules of 

present and past tense, refusing to stay put.

She speaks of her sister, gone now for decades, 

paying a visit, how they laughed and ordered chow mein. 

She tells me that her mother, my Grandma Artie, 

is sleeping in her room with her, an arrangement that 

she seems to find both comforting and amusing. 

"I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me," 

she says in wonder, "but she's right here."

She tells me how they drove out to the old house 

on Western together, as though not a year had passed. 

"What do you think about that?," she asks, though 

it's less of a question and more an exclamation. 

I ask her what she thinks of it, then add that I'm happy 

they're getting this time together. She agrees.

But sleep is never far off, and she is tired again. 

Still, I hope there are one or two more stories to be told,

in whatever form. I will do my best to follow.

SCHOOL LESSONS

 

    I'm waiting on Timberlake Road for the school bus to rumble up the curve from below and take me to Wheelock Elementary. It's cold, as it always seems to be when waiting for the bus in the morning. There are a couple of other kids, but no parents in sight. Parents are known about, generally speaking, but never really known, not unlike stage hands shifting props around, giving cues, then disappearing again.

The snow is hard and patchy. We draw patterns and miniature roads on the frozen ground with our boots, blow clouds of imaginary cigarette smoke into the air; and though I know envy is a sin, I am secretly envious of the cooler kids' moon boots and silver NASA-inspired jackets. Imagine walking around looking and feeling like an astronaut all day! The closest I will get is drinking Tang for breakfast, that powdery nuclear-orange concoction that the commercials promise is what the astronauts drink in space.

Kindergarten itself was not so bad. In those days, it functioned more or less as a daycare, and as an introduction to the routine, discipline, and socialization of school. We listened to record albums on the boxy metal phonograph, enjoyed story and nap time, and a snack of Graham crackers and grape juice. Already I had some favorite books, with Curious George, and The Pokey Little Puppy at the top of the list.

First grade, at Farnsworth Elementary, presented some new challenges and anxieties, especially for a shy kid who much preferred an interior life of his own design. The school was bigger, and the kids were suddenly louder and more aggressive -- and there were simply more of them, crowding the hallways and classrooms, and the high-fenced yard we used for recess.

A stern-faced teacher by the name of Miss Johnson had straight blonde hair reaching nearly to her waist, and long red fingernails sharp as daggers. I knew this firsthand, as she liked to dig them -- hard -- into the back of my neck for continuing to write my letters with my left hand, which was still viewed by many as incorrect. It might even indicate that you were a bit slow, or backwards. To me, of course, it was the only way. Still is. And as self conscious as I was about some things, this was never one of them. I've been surprised to learn that a couple of people I know started out as lefties, but were bullied enough to make the switch as kids. This would have been unthinkable to me. I was as stubborn as the day is long when I needed to be, and I figured the issue was theirs, not mine.

WHERE THE OLD HOUSE STOOD

 

After your funeral I walked, by memory, to the old house,

as if I might somehow find you lingering there,

as if the years had waited all this time, unchanging.

But the old house, dear brother, was nowhere to be found.

A new one stood in its place -- charming and respectable, freshly

painted, with an impossibly green and manicured lawn.

Nothing you would have recognized. Only the trees

seemed familiar, the old and stately oaks grown older still,

the fan dance of their shadows wavering at my feet.

They would know you, I'm sure, as the lake water would,

as I barely had time to before you were gone.

We are becoming part of the past, dear brother,

a world which we had no idea we were creating as kids;

and it's something I can just about see if I narrow my eyes,

the way a rough sketch hidden beneath a painting

can be seen when held up to a particular kind of light.

Would you mourn this loss with me, I wonder.

Or would you perhaps be grateful, as I am, that no one now

can sleep where we slept, dream where we dreamed;

no one will smoke unfiltered Camels on the slanted roof,

the chilly autumn sunlight looking on in silence.

Those rooms where we laughed, where we fought, talking

long into the night, stand within these walls of words --

every door and window intact, every creak and groan of that

shifting house familiar. It all belongs to us now.