AUTHOR PHOTO

 

It was the way he held the temple tip of his eyeglasses gently against his lips, pinched and not quite smiling, as if he were about to nibble them, lost somewhere in thought, or at least within the bright confusion that sometimes leads to it. It was the faux-shabbiness of the shelf behind him, filled with well-placed books for our consideration, the loosely-tied silk scarf, and the sporty blazer of no discernable color. But mostly, it was the hands -- hands that looked as though they had never lifted anything heavier than a pen and notebook, never shoveled snow or horseshit, or shingled a roof in ninety-five degree heat, never picked cotton or plucked metal shavings from them after a double shift on the assembly line. They looked, to my eye, as though they had been preserved under museum glass for this moment alone, positioned now in some uncommitted form of prayer, one index finger folded inward toward himself, as if we had somehow missed him, as if he were afraid of receding back into the silence of the page.

MATHEMATICS

 

My scalp prickled with tiny beads of anxiety.
Everyone had left school but me and Mr. Heaney,
who hovered like an unwelcome shadow, occasionally
rising from the fortress of his desk,
hands clasped behind his back,
gray New Balance sneakers
all but silent in their slow, deliberate steps.
The blackboard had been wiped clean of equations,
dark and certain as the night sky,
with only
a few ghostly wisps of that other world showing through.
I was trying and failing, trying and failing to master
long division and algebra, the worksheet paper
worn nearly to nothing from my endless revisions.
The universe, he liked to remind us, is made of numbers.
You must know this if you are to know anything.
I did not doubt this, though it was a language
the Creator had clearly chosen to keep from me.
I labored on as the afternoon light gradually shifted,
the blank face of the clock counting out its lengthening
seconds, each with a small sense of finality.
I could imagine the invisible threads connecting
all things, like the elaborate webs of spiders,
glistening, though I gave them neither name nor meaning.
I could hear the voices of what sounded like summer
outside the window, voices rising and falling,
could almost make out the words that elicited their sudden laughter, though it all seemed, in those
strictly measured moments, to be light years away.

PENNIES

 

I'm going to miss them when they go,
as they inevitably will, those impractical
remnants of the past, smallest
of small change that we, as kids, placed on the sun-warmed railroad tracks, waiting for the weight of a Burlington Northern
to wipe their words and images clean.
I'll miss the glass jugs and Ball jars
filled with them, soapy light slanting through the kitchen window
sparking each of them in a different way.
I'll miss their jangle and their coppery smell, and how they could make a kid feel rich waiting to cash them in at the bank,
to be counted and rolled like cigars.
Most of all, I will miss their random promise of luck,
how a moment, a mood, a day
could turn on such a small object,
dropped or tossed along the sidewalk,
waiting to be reclaimed, waiting to reveal, to you alone, its secret worth.

MY MOTHER'S CHINA

 

My mother's china -- bone-white, heavy in young hands,
encircled with a pattern of sky-blue flowers
and filigree, tiny leaves pointing in all directions
at once -- emerged from the far reaches of the cupboards
only twice a year -- Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
It was a set acquired, piece by piece, each having its day,
by saving up a small fortune in S&H green stamps
from the local Red Owl -- the delicate teacups
and saucers, the weighted serving tray, dinner plates
and bread plates, a cream pitcher for coffee.
Even butter claimed its own home -- such extravagance!
Yet we could not have know -- how could we? --
what such an ordinary luxury might mean to our mother,
to at last have something simple and fine, something stately
among the brick and cinder block of the projects,
the mountain girl from Tennessee, denied even a doll
or summertime shoes, trying hard to forget one
lifetime while imaging another, brighter somehow,
which might or might not choose to emerge.
But twice a year, at least, we drank our milk from goblets
like royalty, poured our canned, grayish vegetables
and gelatinous cranberry sauce onto what we imagined
must have been the prettiest plates in town,
while that gravy boat, loaded with thick, brown cargo,
sat motionless among the white cloth of its waters,
dreaming already of the long voyage home,
its sturdy bow not to be seen again for months.