MAN AND CROW

 

No one remembers now how or when, but the crow took to Grandpa Nels, and he took to the crow, until it began to follow him far into the field, the two of them talking about whatever it is that a man and a crow discuss -- the likelihood of rain, the ordinary things that matter most, or what it means to be alone on this earth. When he carried water from the well to the barn, again and again, the crow tagged along. When he fed the fox that slept in the shed, never bothering the turkeys in their pens, the crow kept watch. Grandma said the bird was so smart it could count and answer your questions, and always knew when you were talking about it. They took to speaking Finnish, the way they did to keep the kids from listening when they argued. They forgave it for stealing coins and buttons, a thimble, and even Grandpa's teeth, which were eventually returned. When it vanished, no one knew just why. It simply had crow work to do, perhaps a family of its own to watch over. But it left its absence in all the places it had been. Grandpa's shadow grew thin, his body frail, and whatever had been spoken between them remained so, white clouds sweeping clear the summer blue sky.

ERRAND

 

My mother had already broken the eggs,

measured out the bleached white flour, before

realizing that we were out of sugar.

Which is how I found myself -- a child of seven,

hesitant to speak or approach anyone -- standing

at the rusty screened door of my grandfather's

cabin with instructions to borrow a cup.

No one had mentioned this stranger before,

released from prison to die in his own way,

away from others, like any mortally wounded animal

will do, absence being the last and only

dignity most of us can summon.

No one had warned me of the skeletal visage

which emerged, hairless and scowling,

watery blue eyes sinking deep beneath the frames

of his black horn-rimmed glasses.

I looked down, then away. I stammered out

my small request, met merely with a cold, inscrutable

glance, bearing little or no curiosity as to my

existence, the grandson who happened to share

his date of birth, letting fall only a kind of

mumble-grunt meant to convey a simple No,

and a not-so-gentle closing of the door.

Only decades later did I understand why

my mother refused to go herself,

or that the instinctual, visceral fear which I felt

was, in fact, justified. But for now, I was

content enough simply to be walking away,

unconcerned with the minor failure of my mission,

while the old man receded into the confines

of self, offering only the slow certainty

of his departure, a bitter shadow lengthening,

imperceptible, like blood seeping out

from beneath our feet.

SEARCHING FOR THE POET'S GRAVE

 

They are searching for Lorca's remains again

today, their big yellow machinery

nudging and clawing at the silent earth,

scooping out rows and rows of doorways

along this withered patch of soil.

Though no one is here now to answer them,

no one to say, No thank you, sirs,

I'm not interested in returning,

and your Bible is no map for my soul.

But they have not questioned the cloud formations

in passing, nor the monuments of generals,

nor the crooked olive trees, unwaveringly lazy

in their beauty, witnesses to all.

No one has called in the sun and moon

to spit out their long and secret songs, explain

their absence when needed most.

No one has yet knocked upon my door,

demanding to peruse the shelves,

where they would surely find the one they seek,

still speaking, unafraid, his linen suit

not even wrinkled.

But the workers, naturally, will go on

with their labors, long past sunset,

coming back empty handed, the shapes of

new countries emerging through their shirt-sweat,

while the poet just goes on dreaming,

as he did a hundred years ago,

the witnesses to his whereabouts

now seemingly everywhere.

WHAT WE CARRIED WITH US

 

It couldn't have been much, whatever

could be tossed into two plastic garbage bags

and carried, from the station wagon

to the front porch of our foster home,

a word which we had neither heard nor spoken,

but one that would become as common

as a surname, shorthand for others to describe us.

We carried our toothbrushes and combs,

clothes and underwear, carried whatever toys

or stuffed animal could be retrieved,

while the cacophony of sirens sped our comatose

mother to the cold comfort of hospital rooms,

plastic roses, a potpourri of pills to replace

the ones which had not managed to kill her.

We took a blanket or two, worn and pilling,

superhero pajamas, damp familiarity

of our own sweat-smell.

But mostly, we took all that we could not

speak of -- the unshifting weight which

an absent father leaves, ladder rungs of anxiety

we could neither climb nor give name to,

the mutual shame of bed wetting

and the sudden difficulty of common speech.

We carried each other, brother, hardly

aware that we were doing so, always balancing,

always stronger than we looked or imagined.

We carried that grief until it settled in,

quiet and unobtrusive, a gentle tune humming

through the bones. I'm singing it now, though you

have been gone now these many years,

pausing just long enough for you to whistle

through the grass blades, bend that grosbeak's note

just so, rustle the cotton shirts and work pants

upon the line in a pantomime of breath,

the familiar motion of walking away.

IN THE ABSENCE OF

 

Lately, my daughter has been having brief episodes of leaving this world. What were once generally referred to as spells. Or perhaps, it is the world that is turning away, walking past her periphery and into nothingness. The world of things simply needing a moment to collect itself. The world of images suddenly with nothing new to offer. Perhaps she is discovering, as she must, that the universe is made mostly of absence, that form is yet another emptiness, and emptiness that which we perceive as form. "Just now," she says, "when I was talking to you, for a minute I couldn't see or hear you." "But I was right here," I remind her, "Even when you thought I had gone away." I want her to remember this, many years from now, want her to rest easy in the absence I have created solely for her.

MUSIC BOX

 

My daughter turns the match-thin handle

of the music box, its tiny metal teeth

plucking out "Love Me Tender"

with the bright clarity of a child's lullaby,

slowing and increasing the tempo

of this tune she has learned this way,

its simple notes rising and falling

from her steady outstretched palm.

When I was her age, my older brother

and I rode in the back of a sweltering hot

station wagon while a calm and serious voice

broke through the radio announcing

that Elvis Presley, a man who seemed

to me to be from another planet, had died

suddenly, at his home in Memphis.

Death was a gray and mysterious thing;

but I knew that it meant an absence,

a silence which no one came back from.

Yet music lives upon air, much longer

than breath alone, writing and rewriting

itself at will -- and here it is again

on this most ordinary day in autumn,

dry leaves tapping at the window glass;

a day made all the more lovely by its brevity,

and because we are here to speak of it.

Which is to say that there is no need

for the saying, no need at all. This song,

however small, will do just fine.

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.

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.

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.