SUBTITLES

 

I don't know when it happened, but I have grown

too old or too lazy to read the subtitles of foreign movies,

snippets of dialogue scrolling across the bottom of

the television screen like a stock market ticker,

another language I can never hope to understand.

We used to watch them nearly every weekend,

caught the classics and the obscure at film festivals,

along with the old Hollywood variety, all those beautiful

made-up faces speaking as though they came from

nowhere in particular, a place we longed to be.

You always said that people should come with subtitles,

and -- most of us, at least -- with warning labels.

I sometimes wish for a translation of all the things

you did not say, every ellipses when you looked away,

though you are now beyond the world of words.

I do miss sharing a language, speaking in shorthand.

Last week, I let an old black-and-white movie run,

the sound turned down to a muffled whisper,

while I dozed off. I could comprehend the passion

well enough, occasional bursts of anger, the wariness

that men and women always bring to each other.

I could understand it this way, the sudden slamming

of a door, sad eyes gazing from a cloudy cafe window,

the rushing toward a train, its smoke a signature.

I could imagine then how it all worked out.

VINTAGE

 

I have reached the age when walking into

the local Goodwill feels like nothing so much as

a time capsule of every childhood store

I once wandered, unaccompanied, losing myself among

the latest shoes and clothes, the novelties,

televisions and stereos my family could never

have afforded, days when the mall was a great city

of the mind, and the better half of a day could be lost

thumbing the racks at Great American Music.

I have become, along with my once-youthful peers,

and every generation before us -- vintage,

a word we never would have uttered as kids,

clad in our secondhand polyester pants, creeping

above our ankles, our threadbare sweaters

and enormous collars, nothing ever fitting quite right.

But here are the parachute pants and windbreakers

I once longed for, those white Nike sneakers

with the red logo that all the bratty UMC kids had,

the leather jacket I paid next to nothing for.

I think also of you, my love, how you could always

find something of worth to be reclaimed,

a jumper, a blouse, or dress to mix and match

with something at home, an unexpected pairing,

as perhaps we were all those years ago,

complimenting each other before irrevocably clashing.

I think of the racks of cotton and rayon removed

from your closets, faux fur and pencil skirts,

baubles, beads, and broaches packed up and driven

from your empty apartment to the thrift store.

I see some things you might have liked,

but I'm not buying, just passing through today,

having run this last errand on your behalf,

the bright January sun offering precious little

warmth, casting its unwavering glare in my rearview.

JASPER

 

When I was a kid, I felt invisible more often

than not -- sometimes through a combination

of will and imagination, and sometimes

through the unseeing eyes of adults,

voices prone to shouting, from the kitchen

or the living room, "Get those kids

out of here! I can't hear myself think."

It was good, then, to have a vanishing act,

to know when to slip away, and when to stay gone.

Now that I am growing older,

gray, unassuming, fumbling for

my reading glasses, I again

feel myself becoming part of the unseen

or what my mother and aunts

used to refer to as a Jasper,

that eternal stranger passing through, ostensibly

harmless, whose name no one could recall.

There's no loneliness like a crowd,

and while this is neither comfort

not revelation, it is not without advantages.

In the coffee shop, I order without

small talk, I sit, off to the side, sketching a few words

the way an artist might sketch

a tree, a cloud, a figure in the distance

a world I may enter, as I always have, disturbing

no one in my coming or going.

ON THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF YOUR DEATH

 

Twenty years have come and gone, brother,

as quickly as the space between one

breath and the next, a shrug or sigh, or that pause

after I had asked you something mundane

and obvious, barely requiring words, though

you would answer just the same.

Twenty years gone and you are never

quite an absence; I still slip into the present tense

when speaking of you, still dream you that way,

still send occasional word back from this

strange and broken world. Twenty years, and still

I search for you as I drive the old north end neighborhoods,

though the houses of our childhood, weathered

even then, are no more, replaced by

new frames, new siding and additions, new families

stirring and shuffling inside, doing things they

will remember only decades from now.

Even the housing projects have acquired

a small semblance of respectability, gone now

the prison-like walls of cinder block we used to scale,

hot to the touch beneath the summer sun,

replaced by open patios, brightly-colored pots

of plastic sprouting zinnias, daylilies, and aspidistra.

Twenty years gone in the blink of an eye,

one frame of the scene deceptively the same

as the next, though something of the earth

has been altered, irrevocably so, each season

and slant of light rushing in blindly, barely noticing

who or what has been left behind.

THE LAST SUPPER

 

When Aunt Anita got word from the clinic

that the cancer was fanning outward

like a web of newly shattered glass,

and that it was, in fact, inoperable, she promptly

planned a get together for family and friends,

an informal wake that she would attend,

and which she dubbed -- not without a touch

of gallows humor -- her last supper.

She arrived in a ball gown, sequined and sparkling,

her long dark hair newly styled, flitting

from table to table, bar stool to bar stool,

glasses raised and clinking, remembering both

the good times and the hard times with

those she knew -- and she knew nearly everyone.

She was their confidante, keeper of their

stories, their sorrows, and secrets.

The next morning she slipped quietly into

a coma, one long dream receding into

another, never again to wake.

Born into nothing, into a town so insignificant

that no one had bothered to name it,

she left this world, nonetheless, dressed to the nines,

a benevolent ruler with a Louisville slugger

tucked behind the bar, just in case.

She left, quite simply, glowing.

CAESURA

 

Sibelius, too, near the end,

learned to love silence

more so than the notes which

he once constructed,

held one finger up to the air,

as though about to sign

his name -- but, of course,

his name was already there.

MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER AT 75

 

In the photo, grown cracked and distant

with age, my great-grandmother Kustaavas is seated

outdoors, her plain dress dignified, unadorned,

a large birthday cake balanced on her lap.

Her face, remarkably unlined, looks on, quizzically,

head tilted slightly to one side, a thin glimmer

of a smile shining forth through shadow.

She is centered perfectly in the frame,

as she was undoubtedly in life, yet clearly seems

unaccustomed to such a fuss being made.

In the lower left, the back tire of a Model-T

casts its lengthening shadow, a tangible bridge

stretching from one century to the next;

while further off to the right, a milk pale stands

as a reminder that this life is a life of work,

its chores never finished, and that cows, chickens,

and children pay little heed to the sabbath.

But in this moment, at least, she appears content

with it all, the moment of stillness well earned.

In the next, she will draw her breath in deeply,

blow the candles out like so many sparks

of light in the night sky, out past the camera's

shuttered lens, beyond her own imagining,

far enough to find us here, still in need of such light.

Send more, Isoäiti, send more.

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.

ECHOCARDIOGRAM

 

There was a time, not so long ago,

when a young woman's hand sweeping

gently, purposefully across your bare chest

would spark a rush of movement

within the blood, stir the recognition

of one flesh meeting another, somehow

both new and ancient at once.

But today you have crossed a threshold

of sorts, where this young woman,

who balances perfectly kindness and business,

measures every bruised and weary chamber

of your heart. "Breathe in," she intones,

"Now stop. Hold that breath...Good."

From the corner of your eye, you can see

the black and white of the ultrasound,

like a closeup of the moon, or years ago

seeing your daughter for the first time,

hiccupping within her mother's frame.

You think, too, of the Buddha, said to pass

into prajnanibbana this way, reclined

on his left side, eyes half-closed, neither

looking nor looking away. But this,

this, you think, is merely a form of limbo,

the moment midway through the play

when the stage lights dim to a dusty blue

and the whole of the set is quickly rearranged.

You sit upright, button your shirt, surprised

by the sudden return of clinical light.

You thank her for her trouble, take the old soldier

in your chest -- by turns too fast, too slow,

too big for its own good -- meandering

down the hall, and out into the wintery day,

blustery and colorless, quietly resigned

to whatever might happen next.

BODY, WORK

 

In the morning, slowly stirring into wakefulness

and reasonably good sense, muscles

stirring, uncoiling, it is sometimes difficult

to tell if we are, in fact, mostly body,

or not the body at all. Only moments before,

hovering between those two incongruous

worlds, we seemed just fine without it.

Yet only weeks ago, when my head hit the hardwood

floor as mindless as a fist, only the matter

of matter was felt, or needed,

a not-so-gentle reminder of the humility

required before the fact of one's own flesh.

I am thinking, too, of a friend in California who

speaks in reverent tones of body work,

her hands having touched and touched again

the shoulders, backs, and ribcages of

hundreds, working circles into those hidden caves

previously unknown until the pain spoke

a little louder. rattled the locks nearly loose.

If I am being honest, I must admit to

envying her unequivocal love for every form,

of not seeing any as broken, or even flawed,

merely wondrous, as they must be.

Another friend tells recently of leaving the body

entirely during deep meditation, his wife

and children calling out for him, the corridors

of his own slender frame suddenly so small

that he feared he might not be able to return.

I, of course, want to believe in both --

the body at last finding its way toward

acceptance upon this earth, at home within itself,

rooted and admired as any tree along the river,

while the spirit, wild as ever, grows so

expansive that the gods themselves must shift

to make room, turning away like the lazy lovers

we always suspected them to be.

NOTES AFTER A BLACKOUT

For days -- then weeks -- after the fall,

when those sudden waves of dizziness would

arise with even the smallest of movements,

and turning over in bed meant pulling

the whole lopsided world up beside me

as well, I found myself practicing gassho after

a long and lazy absence -- first in my

mind's eye, then placing my palms together

just above heart level, centering, centering,

denying the duality of left and right,

up and down, false gravity pulling me

in both directions at once. It surprised me,

this seemingly inadvertent reverence, as if I had

been granted a small offering of grace,

the unassuming dignity of walking slowly,

cautiously from one room to the next.

I felt a measure of kindness to the bruised and

swollen face gazing back from the medicine

cabinet mirror -- face that here needed neither

explanation nor apology -- the same face that

had been waiting there for all this time.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD CAFE

 

The elderly couple sitting near the window, here amongst the midday cacophony of voices climbing over voices, coffee cups clanging like broken bells, enjoys their meal in measured silence. You might not notice them at first, this small island of calm, cloud-gray and unassuming, their subtle movements reflected in the glass behind them. They nod, shrug their shoulders in bemused acknowledgement, passing small packets back and forth, as if they were coded messages. Do not mistake this for nothing. Do not presume they have said all there is to say in this lifetime. They have, it seems, moved beyond the boundaries of words, beyond the Yes and the No, with little need now to ask for what lies plainly here between them.

GHAZAL WRITTEN ON A SMALL PATCH OF WINTER SKY

 

That indescribable blue after a winter storm

reminded me of you, your eyes filled with distance.

What could I have said to keep you here longer,

when what I say now must reach through every distance?

God does not speak our language or write us letters,

our words merely fragments thrown into great distance.

There is a strange joy in singing deliberately off-key.

Any singing we can manage is a way to close the distance.

When I was younger, I walked without second thought.

Now, my bones upon waking remind me of each distance.

It's a kind of blessing to let each loss have its say.

Not all of us live to sign our names upon that distance.

Still, I never meant to say to let go of this world, brother.

Forgive me. You know I can never fill such a distance.

CELEBRATION'S END

 

Once, you thought you had all the time in the world. Maybe you did. But now the world is spending that time like a soldier on leave, throwing mountains of confetti for a party already nearing its end. The handful of guests remaining speak so softly, as if in code, imperceptibly moving away while standing still. The music, too, grows fainter, reduced to a residual hum, a melody remembered from childhood rising and falling again. You find yourself picking up the half-drained glasses, overflowing ashtrays, stacking mismatched dishes in the kitchen sink. It looks to have been quite the event, one that won't come around again. You only wish you could remember more. Who was that bird-like woman speaking your name so intimately, embracing you with abandon? What of that man leaning in too closely, talking politics all night, demanding your stance on the latest referendum? Next time you will take mental notes, leave a guestbook at the door for all to sign as they leave, hopefully still laughing, bright strands of paper clinging to their heels.

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.