HOW ARE YOU?

 

In this country -- forever in a hurry, forever

distracted by the fast word and the fast dollar --

when someone asks, "How are you?",

they immediately begin speaking of their own day,

their family, a medical procedure they will be

having the following week -- or they simply continue

walking, hardly expecting an answer

or even acknowledgement. It is, for the most part,

the verbal equivalent of a nod or a wave, polite

and yet, if we are being honest, largely meaningless.

But I come from a very northern people --

reserved and sincere to a fault --

with little regard or use for small talk.

Such a question is regarded as personal, even intrusive,

and the one asking should be prepared for

a long and tangled story, personal grief or love

confessed, or a long buried secret that had

been waiting decades for the sweet air of release.

So when I asked this of you, who had just

traveled for hours by plane to visit family and friends,

and to sit next to me on this worn red sofa,

and you began weeping, softly at first,

shuddering, open and unapologetic

with your tears, it was a language I easily understood.

"No one has asked me that in so long,"

you managed to say, as we embraced with no need

for further words or translation, letting the waves

ease slowly into stillness and quiet,

the safe passage of another day opening,

the wonder of its ordinary light, thin along the horizon,

toward a country in which we both could live.

SENSITIVE

 

I have never wanted for you, dearest daughter,

to be anything other than the beautiful and sensitive

soul you have always been, collecting oak seeds

to watch them spin back down to earth,

those long-stemmed dandelions bent over, as if in prayer,

deciphering the forms of strange new animals

among the clouds, where the ancestors sleep,

faces smiling back from the most ordinary of stone.

I have admired, as an outsider, the special language

you share with birds and trees, how the cats

in the neighborhood all come to you, unafraid,

knowing you already, and how you mourned deeply

the death of your beta fish, the one you called

your sister and confided your worries to.

I have heard you choosing each word for a poem

or song, tapping them against the roof

of your mouth, letting the new sounds settle,

until they filled your ears as perfectly as the silence,

watched you conduct, with arms gently waving,

a string concerto constructed in your mind;

and when bullies have thrown their sharpened words

like so many stones, I have sat within your sorrow,

unable to offer an answer as to why some, young

or old, simply enjoy the act of causing harm.

These are the times when I want nothing more than to

protect you from the inclement elements of self,

the ever-shifting atmosphere of your inner world

overwhelming you, to close, temporarily, the windows

against the sudden rain of summer, until the sun

again finds its way, small enough to tuck into

your pocket like a coin, thin and hot to the touch,

rubbed smooth at the center, reflecting.

AN AFTERNOON IN EARLY JUNE

 

It was the day of our neighborhood fair, the street closed from one end to the other to make room for carnival rides, local food vendors, and musicians. Kids with faces painted as jungle cats or superheroes strode up and down, panting dogs lapped up the water left out for them. Someone at the coffee shop had paid in advance for the next person's order, a gesture which was quickly taken up by the next, and the next, on and on, each new customer surprised by this mild act of generosity. The cash register grew quiet, the tip jar was emptied and filled again. I like to think this small, impromptu ritual went on long after I left, their smiles and nods, the polite raising of their glasses, stranger to stranger. "Kippis!," as my daughter and I say at home, a Finnish toast I first heard as "keep us" -- as in, keep us well, keep us together, keep us close to the source of this love, whatever the name. Keep us here, savoring that first sweet sip the whole length of the day.

COMFORTING THE CHILD

 

Being the only son of parents who

abandoned their children as easily as one

walks to the grocery store -- one

preferring the soft oblivion of Stoli and

sleeping pills, the other the peculiar balance of

status and anonymity that only money

affords, -- I stand, perhaps, too closely to

my own girl, always on guard,

hovering, worrying myself into sleeplessness.

I am nothing if not vigilant, an occasional

nuisance of concern, golden retriever of a father

at the gate, barely blinking, awaiting my cue.

When she races up the steps of her school,

confident in a way which I never was,

my pride mingles with a tinge of unspoken grief.

Still, I want nothing more than to be taken

for granted, to never be known as an absence.

I want for her the autonomy of knowing,

for love to be as constant and as easily forgotten

as the silent pulse of blood at wrist

and ankle, and my hand upon her shoulder

when she hurts, drawing circles

on her back, comforting, not only her

but the child no longer there.

CHANGING THE ENDING

 

How many of those old children's tales

have I found myself editing and adding to

while reading to my young daughter?

How many children were spared at the last from

becoming some cretin's favorite meal,

how many kindly animals saved from the axe?

What kind of mother sells her kids to the gypsies?

What kind of father could somehow be talked

into leaving his children alone in the woods,

hungry and terrified, with only the birds

and breadcrumbs to help lead them home?

Even poor Francis, that inquisitive and mischievous

badger, was threatened with a spanking

for failing to fall asleep on command, with me,

grudgingly, having to explain the meaning

of the word, so foreign was the idea in our home.

Things are very different in this telling of ours,

a world apart from that of her father's.

One day, perhaps, she may understand how

I somehow altered my own narrative, and

therefore hers, simply by being the father who

stayed, who chose to do so every moment.

Though there are still many days when I long

to change the story, if only by slowing it down,

pausing before the next turn of the page.

Every small moment has somehow become

my favorite, every adventure the greatest one yet.

I am only beginning to understand, dear reader,

and I confess, I never want this story to end.

VALENTINE

 

The valentine I wrote for you just walked out the door, unfinished, with the unblinking haste of a lover scorned. God only knows where it's headed, or what it was thinking. It's snowing now -- thick, wet parentheses encompassing every breath, the wind throwing short, hard blasphemies at no one in particular. It's easy for something so small to get lost. Nevertheless, I hope it reaches you, fluttering and modest beyond reason, yet insistent enough that you bring it in -- out of kindness or curiosity -- from the unremitting cold.