CHARLOTTE

 

Charlotte was well into her ninth decade,

with no plans for retirement, making,

slicing, and packing sandwiches

on the assembly line with the rest of us

poor souls -- perpetually bored teenagers,

dropouts, and functioning addicts trying to survive.

Her face was a wonder of lines intersecting

with lines, of worry and laughter,

one long and detailed story leading

imperceptibly into another; her skin, thin

as parchment, polished and shining

beneath the gray industrial light,

especially when she turned to smile.

Her beloved husband Frank had long since left

this life, while their children, and their children, had

grown and moved away, one to the east

and one far out west, remembering, most years,

to call at Christmas and her birthday.

"What would I do sitting at home alone?,"

she would ask to no one in particular,

answering herself with an exaggerated shrug.

Decades earlier, she had worked

at the ammunition plant not far from here,

alongside my aunt Anna Mae, counting

and packing machine gun shells for the war

six days a week, her hands perpetually

smelling of metal and oil for years.

This work was easier, much easier by far.

"Here I can eat what I make," she once quipped,

"and no one gets hurt, or killed -- just fed."

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.

MY FATHER FLYING ABOVE REYKJAVIK

 

It's sometimes hard to imagine my father's face,

even when looking at an old photograph.

In my mind's eye, he is always turning away,

as he is in this moment, maneuvering through the clear

arctic air 10,000 feet above the city of Reykjavik,

as far removed from the fields of Aitkin, Minnesota

as his imagination would have carried him.

I can see the smooth, unlined flesh of his neck

peeking between his military cut and Air Force collar,

can see the blue-green lights of the control panel

blinking like stars, now closer, nor farther.

This would be long before he met my mother,

before he left us, and those families which came before.

This is, you might say, a test run for leaving.

He is an apt pupil, willing to put in the long hours.

Does he spare a thought then for his older brother,

my uncle Leo, drowned, so very handsome at

the foot of Mount Fuji, his uniform weighing him down,

a birthday card written out to his sister floating

on the silent surface like a forgotten map?

Or does he think only of this -- the acceleration

and ascension, the world falling away below,

everything making more sense from this distance?

The sky trails behind him like a new signature.

He may never come down again.

WE ARE STILL HERE

 

We are still here, do you understand,

standing amidst the mountains

of rubble where our children now play,

their faces reflected in the shattered glass

of storefronts and depots, the stagnant

water filling in the tracks behind you.

We have scorched the earth to ash

in order to welcome you, burned down

the humble homes our fathers built

so that you may not know their comfort.

There will be no bed for you here,

no rooms for you to enter, not a single

floorboard for you to walk upon.

For we are still here, do you understand,

singing the old songs and the new,

whistling past the graveyards you have

built as swiftly as we can fill them.

We have, you will see, made room there

for you. We are not uncivilized.

We give you seeds to fill your pockets.

We build statues of you in the snow.

We stand, you will come to know,

as the deep forest stands, unyielding,

breathing in the entirety of sky at once.

We are still here, as even you can plainly see.

We will continue to be here until not

a single blade of grass remains,

nor a single mayfly buzzing in flight,

nothing but the breath that breathes life

into these words, however simple,

upon which we will stand, beginning anew.

WHEN, FOR A MOMENT, I GROW WEARY

 

When, for a moment, I grow weary

from the endless news reports of bombs

dropping from bleak winter skies

and the faceless tanks nudging their way

through streets clogged with rubble,

I turn my mind instead back to that little girl

cradling her ragged doll at her side, there

in the long silence of the subway tunnel

that for tonight has become her bed.

I want to tell her that everything will be alright,

even if that is another bedtime fable,

to sing to her gently, in her own language,

as I would to my own child, who sleeps

at this moment in a warm tangle of sheets,

mouth agape, dreaming, I imagine,

of flight, and of saving this broken world.

I have not yet found the perfect words

or melody to make this promise happen,

cannot quite decipher my own voice

through a distance as immeasurable as this,

this lullaby merely a litany of questions

turning endlessly back upon itself.

Is the lesson simply that we learn no lessons,

that the old names must soon be worn

smooth to make way for the new?

Still, I continue, offering the only comfort

I can summon, the stubborn light of

one still standing, unable to turn away.

THE MISSING FINGER

 

(for Nels Natus, 1896-1959)

In one version, your grandfather walks

purposely through the gently rustling field,

his steps only slightly wider than usual,

jaw clenched, mouth pulled inward,

holding in one upheld hand the finger

which the shears have suddenly removed.

In the barn, the sheep wait, perplexed,

half-kneeling, dark blood not their own

already seeping into damp wood and straw.

In another telling, he angles the gun

as though it were another limb, one eye

closed to the world of dancing summer leaves,

of soft breezes and silent water winding

back upon itself. He is an easy target

for himself, the burnt smell of flesh strangely

familiar, as the war draft notice flutters

on the kitchen linoleum, nearly rising into flight.

No one is left now to remember, or to claim

this as anything other than simple curiosity.

Yet in your mind's eye you can clearly see him,

his worn denim sleeve waving tentatively

to someone in the distance, someone whom

he cannot make out, his face nearly concealed

by a passing cloud of sepia and dust.

But you know it's him by what is missing,

the way the moonlight slashes through

unexpectedly -- once, then again.