ON THE RURAL ROUTE

 

We arrived in the heat-thrum of summer

without warning, two young towheaded aliens from

the land of housing projects and junk yards

commandeered as playgrounds, spent the newly

lengthening days wandering, seeking out box turtles

and toads, garter snakes, plucking fat shining ticks

and the dark tongues of slugs from our sunburned arms

and legs, setting out on small, rickety boats, each

painted a different shade of ever-peeling blue,

puffy orange life vests smelling of must,

of those thick, watery seasons long since passed.

In the winter months, the school bus sometimes

could not get through, and the snowplows were slow

to find us, scraping their stubborn way up that

narrow curve of road to our small scattering

of cabins barely visible, the deep-frozen lake on one

side and the deep hibernating fields on the other,

furrows grown hard as gravestone beneath.

The small black-and-white TV was mostly snow

as well, only one local channel's signal strong enough

to reach our clothes-hanger antenna, giving us

the news we could easily see for ourselves.

The weighted sky hung low, the white earth rising

to meet it, growing closer from all directions,

while all else in the world became hopelessly far away,

our lessons for the day stretched out before us,

waiting to be written, before the early fall of dark.

MATHEMATICS

 

My scalp prickled with tiny beads of anxiety.
Everyone had left school but me and Mr. Heaney,
who hovered like an unwelcome shadow, occasionally
rising from the fortress of his desk,
hands clasped behind his back,
gray New Balance sneakers
all but silent in their slow, deliberate steps.
The blackboard had been wiped clean of equations,
dark and certain as the night sky,
with only
a few ghostly wisps of that other world showing through.
I was trying and failing, trying and failing to master
long division and algebra, the worksheet paper
worn nearly to nothing from my endless revisions.
The universe, he liked to remind us, is made of numbers.
You must know this if you are to know anything.
I did not doubt this, though it was a language
the Creator had clearly chosen to keep from me.
I labored on as the afternoon light gradually shifted,
the blank face of the clock counting out its lengthening
seconds, each with a small sense of finality.
I could imagine the invisible threads connecting
all things, like the elaborate webs of spiders,
glistening, though I gave them neither name nor meaning.
I could hear the voices of what sounded like summer
outside the window, voices rising and falling,
could almost make out the words that elicited their sudden laughter, though it all seemed, in those
strictly measured moments, to be light years away.

PENNIES

 

I'm going to miss them when they go,
as they inevitably will, those impractical
remnants of the past, smallest
of small change that we, as kids, placed on the sun-warmed railroad tracks, waiting for the weight of a Burlington Northern
to wipe their words and images clean.
I'll miss the glass jugs and Ball jars
filled with them, soapy light slanting through the kitchen window
sparking each of them in a different way.
I'll miss their jangle and their coppery smell, and how they could make a kid feel rich waiting to cash them in at the bank,
to be counted and rolled like cigars.
Most of all, I will miss their random promise of luck,
how a moment, a mood, a day
could turn on such a small object,
dropped or tossed along the sidewalk,
waiting to be reclaimed, waiting to reveal, to you alone, its secret worth.

PHONE BOOTH

 

Once, you could find one almost anywhere,

a small and unassuming refuge, and sometimes

the only shelter from a sudden downpour,

the floor of an uncertain summer sky collapsing,

casting hard fistfuls of rain and hail against

the narrow panes of glass, tumbling down from

its small square roof, dimly-lit from within.

Sometimes it seemed the only refuge

from the constant clang and drone of the city,

the exact intersection of public and private,

a hand-me-down space that granted legitimate reason

for squeezing in close beside your first girlfriend,

stranded, shivering, calling home for a ride.

I can still feel the weight of those phone books,

suspended by cables, knocking at our knees,

the thick heavy receiver, the unexpected blessing

of a coin someone had left, mistakenly or not.

I remember most my sister, exiled by our mother

to the booth outside the grocery store,

evenings whiled away under its moth-yellow glow,

chatting and laughing with her latest beau,

making call after call with the same lucky quarter.

There were always messages -- a religious tract

to make a child ponder the afterlife, always an expletive

or phone number, or the secret code of initials,

a bright red heart rounded with a Sharpie.

But you knew that someone loved someone else,

enough so to write it down for all to see,

or scratched it into metal, sticky and smudged,

those rough, uneven letters, as close to permanent

as anything -- their messages still there,

long after their houses have all been removed,

declaring themselves, always in the present tense,

far above our cool and collective silence.

GARAGE SALE

 

Someone, somewhere, has that missing arm

that snaps neatly into Barbie's shoulder;

someone can patch up those jeans, torn and frayed

by time, clean out that ancient coffee pot.

Someone needs an 8-track player in their Chevy,

a jar of random buttons, ball of rubber bands,

someone needs that painting of Jesus knocking

at the door, rays of gold light drifting out.

Someone can restring and tune that guitar.

Someone never read that book in high school,

or heard that album at the right time in their life.

Someone has looked everywhere for that,

then forgotten all about it, then looked again.

Someone has decided to take up bowling.

Someone can save that withering plant.

Someone has just the right photo -- graduation

or wedding portrait -- for that antique frame,

its tarnished brass edges pointing outward

like stars, its bed of black felt empty beneath

the dusty glass, waiting for someone to step inside,

turn on the lights, claim their rightful place.

THE SCENT OF THINGS

 

What I disliked most about moving into all those

different places during childhood -- houses

of family, friends of friends, or rank strangers --

was that nothing ever smelled familiar.

The dark scarred wood of dressers and doors

breathed silently in and out, the salt-grease aroma

of food arose from pots and pans long ago

scorched and settled into their particular seasoning.

Even water boiling was somehow not the same,

the grimy tea kettle hopelessly shrieking out of key.

Soap, perfumes and perspiration clung to every fold

of fabric, laundered or not, the musty basements

and dry dusty attics, the damp funk of dogs

had claimed their territory years before we arrived.

Most days I felt that I had stumbled onto a stage set

without the benefit of lines, or even motivation.

Most days came and went with neither incident

nor reason, the cloudy stove clock ticking.

The air outside felt closer to the truth, even in a place

I did not know. I followed my own tracks from

the day before, addressed the birch trees as family.

When I slept, I curled beneath the covers, knees

to elbows, even in summertime, worried that if I lost

the signature of my scent, I might lose myself for good.

ONE SUMMER EVENING

 

I had forgotten

that it was raining

outside;

I had forgotten

even that there was

an outside,

sitting there with

you, waiting for

it to pass.

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.

BETWEEN BURSTS OF THUNDER, WE HEAR ROBINS SINGING

If we cannot learn the song

of these birds, calling through

the shuddering dark, let us at least

better study their silence.

If we cannot know the secrets

of their flight, let us at least

acquire the stillness they have

perfected on thin air.

TURBULENCE

 

Flying into New York for the first time,

all those years ago, the plane gliding through

wisps of white cloud, waving and vanishing,

before the gray and the darkness

rose to meet us, rough knots of wind

jolting us one way, then another, as if God,

having failed to reach us through other means,

was again trying to get our attention.

Lightning broke like a crack in the glass,

the plastic curtain of the window falling shut,

while my anxious mind immediately began

to map out the details of our demise,

engines coughing and sputtering into silence,

the passengers behind us praying without reserve,

the strangely serene drop from 40,000 feet

to some abandoned field, your thin summer skirt

with its pattern of daisies blending into

the long, wet grass, the shapes of our bodies,

appearing to be running -- whether toward

each other or away -- imprinted into the earth.

But just as quickly, the darkness gave way

to sunlight, the clouds began to erase and rewrite

themselves, shapes of commas and ellipses

trailing off, above and below, the brief story of

our life together -- part comedy of errors,

part tragedy -- still being written, still in search

of an ending that would make sense.

HOUSE OF WONG

 

I never knew what they spoke of, my mother

and aunt, on those lazy Saturday afternoons in summer,

safe within the sanctuary of that restaurant,

always busy, its large temple-like doors painted

black and red, trimmed in extravagant gold,

a world far removed from the inquisitive ears of children.

We could not have imagined what our mothers

had lived through, the house of early horrors

they had endured daily as children, how the bodies

of men became threats against them,

could not have known the senseless anger of

a father who denied even their existence,

could not have known the cause and effect

set in motion long before we arrived.

We knew only the weekly ritual of their meeting,

their sisterly fellowship over greasy egg foo yong

and moo goo guy pan, the endless bowls of

sticky rice that occasionally made its way back to us

in those small white containers, wire handles

and waxy folds, stamped with a stately red pagoda.

If we were very lucky, a fortune cookie might be

tucked away in a purse, something simple

and sweet, the mysterious messages inside them

offering a riddle, or a bit of wisdom for our

childhood minds to ponder, considering as we cracked

them open what might happen next.

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.

MY DAUGHTER SPEAKS OF BIRDS

 

My daughter speaks of birds, speaks in wonder

of their sing-song call and response,

their endless reserve of resilience and guile

in the face of all manner of adversity,

the sudden and startling grace of their flight,

which, after all this time, continues to

amaze those of us standing

flat-footed on the earth below.

She asks which bird I might come back as

after I have departed from this life,

and how she will know it's me.

"Fly close to me three times," she suggests,

"then give out one call." This seems

a reasonable request, provided my new

bird-self can remember the details.

Our ancestors, after all, believed that

the soul was carried in, and away,

on the wings of the sielulintu,

that the whole of earth and sky were formed

from the broken shell of a fallen egg.

We settle, for now, upon a common jay,

brightly handsome but unassuming,

vigilant in watching over its family, never

straying far from its wooded home.

We have, I hope, the better part of this life

to draw our fragile maps,

perfect our signals, our language

of mutual understanding.

THE COUNTY LINE

 

(Tyyne Natus, 1906-1953)

Having waded through the green waves of ditch grass

and wildflowers, bramble grown nearly waist-high,

the prickly stems of young strawberries

and the private cosmology of gnats, we arrive

like casual explorers to examine the broken foundation,

hidden from view off the highway, of what once was

The County Line Bar, place where my grandparents --

only yesterday it seems -- served up drinks

to the always thirsty locals and those passing through,

and no doubt consumed as much as they sold.

Who's to say that these ruins are not sacred,

or their ghosts worthy of remembrance?

Just over there, my grandmother stood for what has

become my favorite photograph of her, framed

on either side by my grandfather and two regulars,

laughing, girlish and seemingly without care,

her small dog held close against her, one cloud of breath,

all but invisible, hovering in the crisp winter air.

This is how I want to remember her, her smile

like a sudden flash of daylight, the gold in her hair

shining, even in black-and-white -- before the loss

of a son on the other side of the world tore

something in her irreparably, before the alcohol bruised

and the weight of her days became too much.

I need to remember this moment, if only for myself,

to remember that she knew joy upon this earth,

the ease and gentleness of common things,

that she loved and was called beloved in return.

DOG DAYS

 

Those long summer evenings of childhood,

when the air stilled, thick and sticky with heat,

and it became impossible to sleep,

my brother and I would bring our pillows

and bedclothes into the living room,

camping out on the floor like intrepid explorers,

stripped down to our white briefs,

our thin cotton sheets billowing like sails

toward the uncharted waters of sleep.

We could hear the chirr of crickets,

and the thump of moths against the screen,

dreading the high and tiny sirens

of thirsty mosquitoes circling the dark.

We would take turns getting up to readjust

the old box fan, which rattled and shook, never

quite staying put but pulling itself forward

bit by bit, or turning slowly to the opposite wall,

as if it knew a better way out of this misery,

this engine to our imaginary boats,

so clumsy and so stubborn, though it was

all we had, its rusted heart and grimy blades

slowing and sputtering to a stop, then

starting back up again, shaking off its own sleep

for our sake, and always -- we hoped --

strong enough to bring us home by morning.

DANDELIONS

 

Perhaps I have been too hard on the housing projects of my earliest years, as if they were merely prisons to be endured. We had yards, after all, as Louie Anderson reminded me. We had clean water and our own rooms, we had a washer and a dryer, and windows which kept out the winter air. We didn't even remember that we were trash, until someone at school reminded us. I learned to play soccer, albeit poorly, with the Vietnamese kids next door, only vaguely understanding the word refugee. We slurped our ramen at lunchtime, me inevitably making a mess with my chopsticks. I noticed that they laughed more easily than others around me, my family included. They grew their own vegetables in a small patch of earth out back, chomped on radishes and green onions right from the ground, washed clean with a garden hose. I loved most the dandelions which sprouted up everywhere overnight, like a thousand suns scattered across the sloping grass. I plucked and gathered them, careful in my choosing, brought them to the back door as a gift. But my mother refused them, saying they would only attract bees, and to throw them away outside. Many years later, when my little girl placed a small bunch of dandelions in my hand, something in me lifted and something in me mourned all over again. We brought them inside, placed them in a small vase, and the bees, busy with their tireless work elsewhere, paid us no mind at all.

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.

FEATHERS OF A DOVE

 

How many trips did we make back then

to the hardware store, as summer

leaned lazily into autumn; how many

dusky shades of blue and gray

holding their secret oceans of light

were mixed on our behalf, a seemingly

endless variety of color swatches

laid out like narrow, unframed windows,

opening onto a bright coastal morning

which no artist could ever have gotten right?

How elegant and whimsical their names,

dreamed up, I imagine, in some drab

and lifeless boardroom, and labeled here

in practiced script: English Chamomile,

Whispering Mist, Feathers of a Dove.

We read them aloud just to hear their music,

the unassuming romance they promised,

the time we longed for most of all.

How many thoughtless brushstrokes

covered the wall at the end of that narrow

hallway, as if the smallest of decisions

could make all the difference for us?

How many weeks before the baby arrived

to parents who could not agree

even on this, our days together already

beginning to flutter from our grasp, restless

and unfinished, all but flying away?