RITUAL

 

In those days, back in the hills of Tennessee, you knew why

the church bell tolled at an unusual hour of the day,

sometimes signaling with a few short hammer strokes,

sometimes slow and sustained, going on and on,

ringing out once for each year of a life now passed.

Someone had to cover the windows and mirrors,

lest the spirit enter and be trapped inside the glass.

Someone had to edge the stationary in black, and to stop

the clocks, as they had stopped for the departed.

Someone had to wash the body, a sacred rite for the closest

of kin, neither to be hurried nor turned away from.

Someone had to stay up with the body, keeping watch,

wildflowers and juniper masking the smell of decay,

mingling with the warm comfort of constantly brewing coffee.

My mother has not forgotten placing silver dollars

on the eyelids of aunts and uncles, of touching

the hand of the deceased in the belief that it would

remove a blemish, which she says it did. But my mother --

having buried her parents, siblings, and two children

at early ages -- is a lifetime removed from that wide-eyed girl,

and from that sepia-tinted world of front porch songs

and white whiskey, of tobacco leaves on bee stings

and a pair of good overalls for Sunday, a Ball jar of pickled

pig's feet and a can of bacon grease above the stove.

She has requested for herself that there be no ceremony,

no tributes, no songs to be song or scripture read,

and above all, no one gazing upon her body.

Perhaps she is simply removing the trappings of this world

in advance, blotting out the unnecessary, the gaps

in her memory becoming the narrowest of bridges now;

her prayers -- whatever they may hold, in whatever

order recited -- require no words to be lifted.

FROM ROOM 104A

 

Overnight, with little warning but a small stitch

turning in your side, and a bit of blood where blood

should not be, you have entered the land of the unwell.

This is the kingdom of white surfaces and sanitizer,

of hushed voices and bedpans clinking, IV stands that

resemble coat racks, and curtains behind curtains,

of paper shot glasses and silent shuffling feet.

You are wheeled from one cool room to another,

quietly and efficiently, the ghost-flicker of ceiling lights

passing like the lines of a highway leading nowhere.

You count backwards. You repeat your name until it sounds

like something foreign, far removed from its source.

You listen, while the faceless man on the other side of

the recovery room coughs and moans all night,

talking, in fitful sleep, to the mother who is not there.

You wonder if your daughter will visit, wonder what day

of the week it might be, and whether you will be

able to write a poem without a window, something

you hadn't realized was essential all this time.

That's where the world is, after all, the one you wish to

return to, in spite of it all; and if it's not exactly new,

or all you had hoped for, it will never be the same

as it was when you left it only days before.

FAST

 

You were always so fast, brother, even when we

were just kids back in the housing projects;

couldn't sit still, your limbs constantly fidgeting,

growing long and quick seemingly overnight,

your lankiness slowly turning into grace.

You were always in pursuit of something else,

something new, risky, while I, the annoying kid brother,

could never keep up, tagging along though I did,

daydreaming, awkward within my own skin.

You drank your first beer, kissed your first girl,

unclasped your first bra as though there was no time

to lose, as though they were the only things

that mattered in a life you could already see drawing

to a close, as though you were on a timeline

the rest of us could neither see nor understand.

When you said, as casually as though commenting

on the weather, that you'd never make it to forty,

I put it down to the whiskey, the dark romance of youth.

Only now, gone so many years, do you linger,

speaking openly as you rarely did before, no need

to rush, or to leave out any detail in the telling.

There is no road. We walk now side by side.

THE LOST CITY

 

We pondered the popular myths of our childhood,

large and small, the blurred and grainy image

of Bigfoot walking through the woods,

so alone that we felt more sympathy than fear;

considered whether to spend our weekly allowance

on those X-ray glasses or sea monkeys

advertised in the backs of our comic books,

those other worlds of myth and muscle,

where humanity, which had been so foolish,

was always saved at the last possible moment.

We wondered, too, where all those planes

and ships had vanished, their signals lost forever,

while attempting to cross the Bermuda Triangle.

Wondered how many miles into the ocean

the lost city of Atlantis -- which we knew to be

true -- could be, and if one of us ever traveled there

in this lifetime without the other, how we might

send word back to the bright world above.

It's the way I speak to you now, brother,

through the weight and distance of all these years,

your reply moving slowly through the waves

while I wonder at the beauty of that city,

sparks of ancient light flashing against its glass,

a story, like you, I am not willing to let go.

ONE YEAR AFTER YOUR DEATH

 

The winter sky reflects the river today,

as it always does this time of year,

each gray-blue sheet of ice

indistinguishable from the other.

The narrow shadows lengthen, drawing

fenceposts around the empty spaces.

Everything becomes clinical fact,

every step taken a punctuation mark,

though what has been said and what has

been left out remain unclear,

hovering like my breath before me.

How is it that I cannot see you now, yet

feel you closer than this wind,

this hardened earth, the bare limbs

of trees reaching like roots in reverse?

All I know today is that we are not made

merely of things that happened --

for better or worse -- nor the way

we smiled, or didn't, in an old photograph;

we are closer, I say, to the light itself

coming through the dusty window blinds,

holding us there, frozen as this day,

making us believe we are the subject,

that we are the ones standing still.

REQUIEM IN WINTER

 

The last hands to touch you were not mine, nor those of any friend or lover, but the powder-blue latex gloves of paramedics, helplessly shaking you, tapping at your thin neck and wrist, while a deputy sheriff -- whose shoulder had broken in the door -- stood by, as if your small body sleeping in your own bed were a crime. Part of me must have stayed in that bed we once shared, but no part that could have saved you. Have we let you down, allowing you to leave this way? How could any of us have known all the different definitions of alone? The last hands to touch you lifted you cleanly from this life, wheeled you out and up the narrow stairs we climbed a thousand times. My mind cannot fathom more -- not the coroner's cooling board and creaking drawer, not the scalpel used to search for what was already gone. So I leave you here, where it is always the same cold morning in January, the door frame hanging like a broken cross in the entryway, and you tucked beneath a fresh white blanket like a child, almost smiling. A flock of wild turkeys has wandered up the bluff; the sky is so bright it blinds.

ROAD

 

There's no marker along that stretch of Highway 8, no stone or plaque bearing your name, the dates you were here, then gone; no makeshift memorial of Mylar balloons and requisite roses wrapped in cellophane. There is only road, indecipherable from any other, its meandering cracks patched with fresh tar, lines offering no discernable word or message. The heel of your boot has been swept away, your handprints -- like wings stopped in mid flight -- have been washed from the dusty hood, the dark blood you spilled allowed to seep slowly into the asphalt, following its own course, like the thinnest of roots, hidden from view. You, of course, have long since passed from this world of ordinary fact -- of arguments and disappointment, of endless coming and going. So, maybe this absence is just as well, along this anonymous road slicing through pine and scrub grass, through small towns without stop lights. No one wants to stop here, or even slow down. They all have somewhere else to be, someone waiting, patiently or otherwise, someone wondering where they are.

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.

YOU CAME TO ME AGAIN

You came to me again in my sleep, as if nothing had changed between us. You wanted to talk about old movies, talk about money and how it made no sense. I had longed for the sweetness of the mundane, the steady rhythm of the dripping faucet wearing away the porcelain of the bathroom sink, dust building its imaginary creatures below our feet. Most of all, I didn't want to tell you that you were gone, slipped silently from this world while you were unaware. But I wanted you to mourn the loss of yourself, as I have, this life of chores and small, fleeting pleasure, the stubborn yet fragile body which gave you so much trouble. Of course, you were better at explaining things, as you often did for me. The words I offer are half-formed and ordinary, hovering between us, neither moving nor standing still. Last week, your sister called to remind me that everyone in our dreams is but a different version of ourselves. If this is so, I am again talking to myself, while you are wondering whether to accept my explanation, whether to answer with words, or the silence we have agreed upon for so long. 

 

GHOST STORIES

 

Visiting the Finnish Lutheran Cemetery,

the small clapboard church leaning wearily toward

the empty highway, my cousin reminds me

of what the gravediggers told her, how the residents here

grow restless in the evening, walking and conversing,

as if not yet settled on this idea of being dead.

"But," she reminds me, by way of disclaimer,

"they have been known to partake in the whiskey."

Everyone has a ghost story around here:

restless ghosts walking the creaking staircase all night,

opening the heavy doors and windows, shaking

the rusty box springs of the bed, or the mischievous one

who locked the unsuspecting dog in the car overnight,

and the stubborn one who followed the family when

the farmhouse burned to the blackened ground.

My ghosts, by contrast, are so reserved, hardly stirring

from their bodies of air, speaking only from the measured

silence of the page, leaving even the dust in its place.

I told you, dear friend, to visit as often as you like,

test your presence in this once-familiar world,

read the poems you wrote when still a teenager,

amused, I would imagine, by what seemed

so important to you then. Haunt me as you like, love.

Come close. Hover, the way you sometimes did

when I worked, if only to see if you are in the words

I have not yet begun to write or understand.

THE AFTERNOON SHE DID NOT DIE

 

Well, we go on -- one hand floating weightless as a balloon,

the body pulling itself downward again.

Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind,

and the ocean is so vast before us.

Though a residue remains, like soot from

a long-neglected fire or a thumbprint on the soul,

and it belongs the way a bruise belongs,

the way our shadows spark and smolder without us,

solitary, when shut away for the night.

Today I walk with neither haste nor direction,

the sex and the sorrow of sad letter days

discarded, the fact of my name, age, and profession

lost to the angular wind. I carry your words

in one pocket, your silence in the other,

past the once-familiar storefronts of our past,

the soft glow of your childlike face gazing back at me

and back upon itself, a foreign postage stamp

on an antique postcard you bought but never sent.

How can I answer now, knowing this business of words,

this stooge's religion, to be diversion at best?

How can I speak when addressing you now means

addressing any tree, or cloud, or patch of grass?

You have grown vast by way of vanishing.

You always said it was an art, a trick you could not unlearn.

But we go on, each in our separate ways.

Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind.

But the body is such a stubborn guest,

unwilling to leave, despite the late hour.

We may as well settle in, make up the spare room.

ASHES

 

For weeks, then months, they sit undisturbed

on a makeshift shelf in your brother's musty garage,

the gray-white residue that once answered

to your name packed neatly into a surprisingly

small cardboard box, unadorned and anonymous.

Drums of exterior paint and car exhaust

surround you now, boxes of tools, and bulky

winter clothing packed in large plastic containers,

the ordinary stuff of life in process.

This is not the respite that I would have wished

or imagined for you, dear friend; though

you will be relieved to know that this stop is not

final, only a way station before the long drive

out of state where you will be scattered,

per your request, out near the railroad tracks

which run the length of your old hometown,

where your mind -- always too sharp and too busy

for its own good -- could wander with neither

weight nor interruption, and your body

could walk and walk never losing its way back.

It's a walk I can't make with you; but should I hear

the call of that Illinois Central, rising

above the chatter of birds and traffic hum,

declaring its own speed and distance, at just

the right angle, I'll say they're playing our song,

as if I could remember the words or tune,

as if the grain and grit of your slender bones

were somehow able to dance again.

CEMETERY GRASS

 

I remember, too, you brushing your hair

in the morning, never gently, but with a quiet

vengeance, as one would rake a field

full of fallen leaves. I imagined, still half asleep,

the sound of claws digging through

deep undergrowth, sparks of electricity

thrown this way and that, lightning flashing

with your frustration below the surface.

"I'm a hag!," you would call out,

and on a good day you would be laughing,

throwing that calico brush to the floor

like a weapon no longer of use.

But I loved your hair, thick and stubborn

its springs and tendrils always reaching upward,

shining like sunlight through whiskey,

threads of silver arriving much too early

for your liking. You said they were your ghosts

returning to have their say, too many

forgotten lives for you to keep track of.

Now, I dress for an early autumn, no matter

the weather, a far cry from the young man

you once loved; and you have become

another ghost to walk beside me, stirring

the trees, brushing the clouds aside as easily

as spider web, curtains, or breath.

RETURNING

 

For the first time since your leaving in the cold-dark of winter, I turned the car onto our former street, houses and cars grown sleepy in the warm afternoon air. Even the songbirds had grown quiet. I walked slowly down the narrow sidewalk where once we walked so many years ago, the breeze upon my face and neck like the breath from another world, an old friend sending back word. The once-manicured lawns had reverted to an urban wildness, the neighborhood suddenly trying to save the few bees that remained, offering them whatever small sanctuary of earth they could. So the daylilies had grown tall and strong, the long grass waved at its ease, and the ghost-heads of dandelions sang their silent choruses, letting their wishes blow wherever they may. In the dim window of the old place, smaller somehow, the face of a tabby cat -- round as an apple -- looked out, as if you had placed it there. I smiled slightly, knowing you would have approved, nodding to myself, moving back into the day.

STRANGERS

 

Maybe we never know each other in the end,

never see past the bright reflecting surface of things,

the innumerable masks we slip into as easily as

our own flesh when waking into morning.

More than once you told me that I was

inscrutable, even after all those years of breathing

the same air, sharing the same silence

and secrets, dreaming between the same four walls.

But I misread you too, love, thought you were

stronger than you were, never knowing

how precarious your balance was on that ledge

between the most ordinary of days

and your own private oblivion. Forgive me

for thinking your stubbornness was only a virtue,

that the well you drew from would be enough

to keep you alive, no matter what lies your

tireless and wayward mind may have fed you.

I imagined you old, the grand dame of the avenue,

wheeling your rickety shopping cart back home

from the co-op, raising your skinny arms

in indignation at the cars and buses who refused

to stop and acknowledge your status.

Maybe we are merely strangers at the end

of it all, no better or worse than when we began;

though I wish you were here to tell me

how wrong I am, how foolish, that we knew each other

as well as two people could, and that if we met

again, every year between and behind us forgotten,

we would want to know each other

as we had before, shy with our first glances,

circling, searching for just the right word,

the right moment, the right door to open, to enter

this life all over again.

THE THINGS WE MISS

 

There are things, near the end of our time together,

that I will never miss -- the petty and pointless arguments

forgotten the following day, only to make room

for the next, and the next, our bodies passing each other

in the narrow hallway en route to our separate rooms,

the thick, weighted silence clinging to the walls

like spiderwebs. that sense of estrangement.

But today -- the first warm sun of spring on this earth

without you -- I recall instead those long Sunday mornings

lounging in bed with The Times and bagels from

the Bruegger's down the street, the inevitable buttery

crumbs on the candy-striped sheets you bought

on sale from Target, and rich, strong coffee chasing

away the lingering fog of late night whiskey.

I remember the long walks from one end of the avenue

to the other, not turning back until we could see

the river snaking between buildings, throwing sparks.

I miss the mundane and unexpected -- being able to ask you

the name of some character actor from the 1940s,

or how to pronounce a word I had stumbled across

in a novel so that I wouldn't embarrass myself in public.

And I remember when, weeks after the separation,

you stopped by my tiny, disheveled studio, not wanting

sex, or residual romance, but merely to warm your

feet -- permanently chilly -- against the back of my legs

in bed. "For old time's sake," you smiled innocently.

I was surprised to be missed at all, surprised

at your request, so simple and immediate, both of us

laughing slightly in that fundamental warmth,

lying together without wanting, blood rising to meet blood

in mutual recognition, then continuing, as they must,

on separate courses, each having known the way

long before we ever came to be.

ELEGY FOR A NON-CONFORMIST

 

You worried a lot in those days about whatever

was deemed "selling out" -- although, from this distance,

the years piled up like so much clutter, I am still

not quite certain what you meant by that.

We all wanted, in our own unassuming ways,

to be outside the mainstream, conformity

being the common enemy of the creative soul.

We wanted somehow to be the diamond in the ash heap,

while remaining anonymous enough to observe.

But you were so adamant about it all, so unwavering

in your stance. Buying a house, having kids,

driving a car, getting married, anything you viewed

as commercial, or part of the American dream

was on your list -- and the list was not up for debate.

If you were here now, I would tell you simply

that you never needed to try so hard.

No one would have mistaken you for ordinary.

But you have left now, in your own way, with neither

ceremony nor instruction, rejecting, too,

all the everyday things we do here to mourn,

smoothing and carving our stones, writing our tributes.

Closure is the word we use, knowing that

there must be a suture for the wound, permanent

though it may be, doing our humble best with

our thin and fraying thread, our words, our words,

our hopelessly mundane and routine ways.

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.