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.

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.

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.

LOST AND FOUND

 

It's not as easy to disappear as it once was,

back in those long ago days before endless threads

of information and the 24-hour news cycle,

before constant surveillance became acceptable,

and anyone, past or present, could be found

with a few clicks on a phone or laptop.

People went missing, and very often stayed that way,

sometimes by choice and elaborate plans,

sometimes turning up with amnesia

in a city on the other side of the world.

Those stories became books and movies, discussed

with amazement at work and the dinner table.

Deaths were staged, and former lives disowned;

a father went out for a pack of cigarettes

and was never heard from by his family again.

My own father ran a successful business

mere blocks from our home, though I never once

saw his face or heard his voice until years later.

You, too, old friend, somehow disappeared

in plain sight, your retreat at first subtle,

then complete, as if planned years in advance.

There was nothing anyone could do.

You became a story with neither an ending

nor linear narrative; though I am speaking of you

now -- that's nothing new -- speaking of you

in the only way I know, reminding myself

that once you were here, right where I am now,

and that once, not so long ago, you could

have said all of this better yourself, could have come

back, if only to tell us what really happened.

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.

GUPPIES

 

Nothing grew in that drab one-bedroom

apartment, gray-blue light cast from the swerving

freeway below, the old service road following

beside it like a shadow, then turning

with a half-hearted shrug, a sad aquarium

of ordinary days circling, reflecting,

measuring themselves against us.

You moved the plants from one window

to another, hung them in the kitchen,

then the bathroom, fed them on eggshells

and coffee grounds -- all to no avail,

their brown and brittle ghosts too weary

to drift away, littering the floor and windowsills.

When we came back from that day trip

to the lake, the guppies you had just bought

were floating on the surface of the water,

their small incandescent bodies motionless,

tailfins like flames sputtered out, yet still glowing;

we knew, separately, without having to say,

that something larger had ended.

You left, at a ridiculous hour of the night,

a time normally reserved for old blues songs,

and weeks later, I did too, filling every bag

and suitcase with all the emptiness I could claim.

Even now, I wonder why we chose that place,

whether in hope or desperation; even now,

I wonder in what other rooms,

what other lives, we might have survived.

SECOND GHAZAL FOR TRISH

 

There's no burying you, no risk of forgetting;

though you would say the past is merely escape.

Whatever truce you made with life was brief,

its tentative agreements offering you no escape.

We were so young, what could we have known?

But I knew, even then, that love was more than escape.

Some days we read for hours, daylight shifting.

You said that poetry was the opposite of escape.

It was, we imagined, you and me against the world,

until the world itself managed to escape.

In the end, you pulled away from everyone,

your stubborn isolation a poor imitation of escape.

The prayer I offer now is one of silence,

the unspoken understanding of no escape.

PERSONAL EFFECTS

 

The family says that Uncle Leo was too sensitive

for the army, prone as he was to daydreams

and poetic whimsy, his soft, pale hands designed

for painting a canvas or cradling a violin,

not the long rifle and bayonet slung over his shoulder.

In the sepia-tinted photos, he looks like a 1950s

matinee idol on location, killing time between takes.

But he could shoot, like any Finnish farm boy,

could drop a buck or a boy in the wrong uniform

if need be. He just didn't understand the need.

Maybe he never recovered from the scythe

striking his head as a boy, hiding among the tall hay.

Maybe something inside him just kept falling.

When he drown at the foot of Mount Fuji,

the dark envelope of water sealing him indefinitely,

Grandma Tyyne went mad with her grief,

following him there a few short months later.

What was sent back wasn't much -- his boots shined,

uniformed pressed and folded, a few small

souvenirs, family photos, Japanese coins and yen.

I like to think that the birthday card he bought

for aunt Leona made it safely back , warped

only slightly by water, its smudged blue letters

looping back on themselves like waves.

I like to think she smiled at his sweetness

before her eyes clouded and all but disappeared.

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. 

 

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.

WEDDING DRESS, NEVER WORN, FOR SALE

 

In the newspaper photo, no larger than

a postage stamp, it resembles most

our childhood idea of a ghost, with neither head

nor hands visible, walking away, directionless,

gently billowing from side to side;

or something you might come across

in a museum, a remnant of love and devotion

gone hopelessly out of fashion, pressed

and pinned behind a case of glass.

A thin, watery light, seemingly without source,

softens the edges along one side,

cuts an angle across the torso like the page

from a book suddenly stripped of words.

This is not our story to tell, though

we can't help but imagine the details --

the blistering late night arguments or withering

silence -- which lead, inevitably or not,

to this sudden change of course.

Someone else can slip into the story

now, change the names, rewrite the ending,

all while admiring the intricate stitch work

weaving in and out, the extravagant

and unnecessary ties, beads, and bows,

white cumulous clouds rising at either shoulder,

the small, angled windows of lace

we can very nearly peer through.

ADDICTION

 

You held your secrets close, as gently

as they would allow, as if they, too, were

wounded things, in need of your full and constant

attention, as if keeping them cocooned

in your cool, anemic room kept you both safe.

So much we did not and could not know,

so much you kept even from yourself.

You longed most for respite from this life,

its continual demands, its pettiness and pretense,

the futility you saw in its endless disguises.

You wanted to step outside of it all, time itself

racing past the window glass, frame by crooked frame.

What a shock, then, when it found you unaware.

What a shock when the pills swallowed you.

I still don't understand the simplest things

in this life -- like how to love and be loved without

fear, or how to explain to others that you were

never the measure of your illness alone.

I still don't know if the world, as you might

have said, is so bitter that we must wash it down

with something strong, or so very sweet

and wonderous that we must raise our glasses

again and again. You tell me. You tell me.

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.

THE LAST TIME

 

The last time I saw you, after so long apart,

I was, I confess, startled by how small you seemed,

as if you had somehow perfected a means of

walking away while standing perfectly still, or were

trying to slip out of this world unnoticed.

Your shoulder blades shown through your frayed

gray sweater, your blue eyes drifting further and further

into themselves. Perhaps our former lives always

seem smaller when we wander back in, or perhaps

we are merely the worry dolls of anxious gods,

worn smooth as river stone with time.

You were having trouble eating, you confided,

and trouble sleeping, too -- though

this malady was certainly not new to you,

your mind forever leaping from one thought to

another at the most inconvenient of hours.

Would I have wanted to know in that moment

that this meeting, seemingly insignificant,

was also a kind of parting, that you would soon

disappear into the shadow world of self, no longer

calling or answering the phone, no longer

reading, or bothering to venture outdoors?

Would I have spoken something disguised

as wisdom, or offered you some small comfort,

a prayer which you would almost certainly have refused?

Would I have thought to ask for forgiveness,

or simply to thank you for the years we walked together?

I do not know. But we parted with smiles that day,

not the slightest taste of bitterness lingering

between us. We were kind, as we had been

at the beginning, as we were meant to be, two

old friends softened into unexpected middle age,

adept, at last, with the familiarity of our leaving.

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.

TELLING STORIES

 

When I remember now those bars and restaurants

along the avenue -- most of them long gone

and forgotten, along with those hopelessly younger

versions of ourselves -- I remember, too,

how you loved telling stories about everyone

within your line of sight, inventing detailed narratives

that were alternately comical, or tragic, sometimes

outlandish, sometimes quite believable.

You knew -- for your own belief in the story

was always essential -- who was on their first date,

and who was on their last, who was celebrating

their daughter's graduation, and who was in mourning;

you knew the man at the bar was out on parole

by the way he clutched his fork, eyes darting like silverfish,

knew which bartender was skimming money,

and which wrote poetry on the backs of napkins.

Now that you have returned so abruptly to silence

and to myth, I can't help but wonder

what you might have said about us, sitting there,

observing, as though we held some secret wisdom.

Would you have invented a better ending

for us, separately or together, one with a bit of nuance,

some humor, or at least a hint of romance?

Might there be an opportunity for redemption?

Sometimes I imagine our stories go on without us,

while we go about our routines, planning

and plotting, setting one book down to reach

for another, endlessly distracted, the lives

we once thought absolute becoming less and less

believable, in need of reconsideration.