MEETING MY FATHER

 

I was ten years old when I first met

the man, shaking hands in a shopping mall

parking lot, as my mother looked on,

unimpressed and uncertain as to whether

this was a wise idea for any of us.

He was tall, dressed in a courtroom suit

and tie, saying, "Good afternoon" with

the practiced ease of a natural salesman;

told my mother that I was a good looking kid,

as if I weren't standing there beside him,

as if he couldn't speak to me directly.

This man I had secretly dreamed of,

who had, by default, become the hero

and villain of every boyhood tale,

this man who by his absence alone

had all but defined me, seemed to me

in that moment to be unforgivably ordinary.

We had a polite lunch, the three of us,

conversation sporadic and strained.

There was much to avoid, though we were,

all of us, long adept at doing just that.

There were no tears and no explanations.

I sat to his right, at his suggestion,

two left-handed eaters avoiding elbows.

And he was right: We did not touch.

Not that day, or any day yet to come.

THE VERY FAMOUS COUPLE

 

The very famous couple strolled calmly past

while we sat outside at small wrought iron tables,

slurping at our IPAs and gazpacho,

pretending to not notice, or just barely.

They walked with the practiced ease of two

who had been together for many years,

and were long accustomed to being noticed,

he rawboned and weathered by design,

she a natural and unassuming beauty,

a local girl who we liked to claim as our own.

We had seen their movies on this very street,

seen their faces ten feet tall, passionately kissing.

We glanced up again as they moved past,

their large white shopping bags rocking gently

at their sides as their figures grew smaller.

"Did you see who that was?," someone asked.

Years later, we read that they had divorced,

heard the ugly rumors of drunkenness

and infidelity, police being called at all hours,

the kids being placed elsewhere to live.

We were right, I suppose, not to have said hello.

We were right to simply let them pass.

MAP

 

My little girl is learning to draw her world.

Rainbows, ships, bridges, monsters,

and waterfalls -- all of them executed

in bold strokes of color -- decorate

our walls, floors, and tabletops.

She draws me, her old man, with black stilts

for legs, a small cloud of chin whiskers,

and white balloon of a hand, five-pointed

like the sun, reaching for her own.

In another, the family has merged into

one great being, impossible to tell whose

outstretched hands belong to whom,

or whose feet are leading the way.

But today she gives to me a blank sheet

of paper, folded neatly in quarters.

"This is your map," she says calmly,

"so you will always know where you are."

I accept with the gratitude of the lost.

I treasure this one most of all.

GHOST IMAGE

 

My daughter unearths it from a stack of yellowing papers on the desk, that silly photo booth image of her parents, younger, turning to kiss; still half smiling, as the shutter clicks them permanently into the cool black and white usually reserved for historic artifacts, or great-grandparents, offering barely a passing glance at their secret worlds. It is the color of distance, and unforgiving detail. She laughs, holding it up to the light, someone's looping handwriting showing through the other side; looks at me, as if for explanation. I ask what she thinks, if it's funny to see her parents -- rarely in the same room for most of her life -- touching this way. "I like it," she says matter-of-factly. "But it's a ghost picture." I nod, and we both go back to whatever it was we were doing only a moment before.

GHAZAL ON FAILURE

 

I can't take credit for every one of my failures.

The best of my mistakes were not made on my own.

When the butcher puts down his blade, he is a Buddha;

but the poet without a pen is simply on their own.

Love's rough bargain offers the world and more;

all that it requires is everything you think you own.

Sleep thickens in the corners of the lover's room.

Even together, we bear the weight of years on our own.

The long shadow of rain crosses my brother's grave.

There is no Why, it repeats; you are on your own.

When I was a child, I could draw every world imagined;

It was no punishment to be left on my own.

Perhaps we grieve most that which never arrived,

a palpable absence that claims us as its own.

The anxieties of youth are lessened by those of age;

but the worst of our lives is not all that we own.

THE NAMELESS BIRD

 

So often we mistake beauty for the light behind it.

We know better, but it's one of our favorite lies.

We long for clarity, seen through the lens of unreason.

Love itself walks between, where all hope lies.

I don't know how the geese find their way back every year,

or what causes two lovers to agree upon the same lie.

These winter crows don't care to know your name;

but they recognize friend from foe, and they never lie.

The bird in your heart doesn't understand that it's caged.

It sings when spoken to, sleeps where its shadow lies.

Death wins the final argument; we understand this.

But that doesn't make the songs we sang suddenly lies.

It's true, brother, that I should visit more often than I do;

but the grave is not where any of our memories lie.

It's no use asking me who is living and who has gone.

If you want the truth, let me begin with this lie.

PASSING THROUGH

 

Have the dead grown tired of our endless retelling?

It's enough to pass through the gates of suffering once.

The absences pile up, fill the smallest windows with shadow;

so many ghosts demanding their place at once.

When I loved you, I spoke in fragments and innuendo.

It's too dangerous to speak of love all at once.

Some people have barely spoken their names, and leave.

My father was a curse my mother uttered only once.

Our youth exists only in the backward glance of song,

the words and melody of which came together only once.

I had no idea it would take a lifetime for one simple thought;

and yet, had I to do all over again, I would do so at once.

Some say that we die within each passing moment,

though we have lived a thousand lives being here once.

When the worst at last happens, we learn to breathe anew.

Like all else, the unimaginable happens only once.