STEMS AND VINES

 

I didn't know the names of most,

other than the obvious, but I would take my time in that small corner shop

at Victoria and Grand, as if I had a plan,

pulling together a wild array

of color and design, jagged stars

and spears of shifting green,

delicate faces receding into their

velvety folds, varieties you might not

expect to find side by side,

but that made sense to my willfully

uneducated eye, bringing them

home to surprise you with.

Though you tended to eschew tradition

of all kinds, you allowed me this

bit of old-fashioned courting,

a word I have since grown to love,

the shy earnestness and ritual behind it,

its long, noble history, the eternal doorstep

we eventually come to, hoping for entry.

Those days are long gone,

as are you, and there's nowhere

to bring you flowers now,

no patch of earth or marbled stone,

not even a vase upon this dusty bookshelf.

The shadows here move without shape;

the wind crowded with your absence.

I wish I could remember

the names of those flowers now,

each spectacular species from another world.

They would be my words, as my words

in turn would bloom for you,

dark and glistening with the earth,

declaring, in no small measure,

everything you must already know.

THE UMBRELLA MAN

 

The umbrella repair man in West London

will fix yours for a modest fee,

set its broken spokes upright again,

turning expertly those pin-screws

too small for ordinary hands.

He knows all about your bad luck days,

the series of calamities that brought you here --

the time the cat ran away,

or when your car wouldn't start

and you were already late for the funeral,

the morning you were nearly blown

into oncoming traffic, your hat

carried somewhere down the road,

your flimsy umbrella turned inside out

against the maddening wind.

He's here to lift your humble sail,

to repair what otherwise would have been

tossed aside, to right and steady your course,

if only in this small, ordinary way,

to send you back into the next downpour,

calm and confident, gray rain falling

hard all around you in a nearly perfect circle,

while you remain unbothered,

as though you were some kind of royalty,

as if you were hardly there at all.

THE DOUGHNUT MAN

 

The doughnut man seemed to turn up

overnight, no advertisement in the paper,

no fliers waving from the wipers of cars,

not even a shop sign in the window,

just the soft, milky glow of a kitchen light

signaling through the dark of early morning,

that heavenly smell wafting all the way

up and down 7th Street, drifting

outward with the smallest of breezes.

No one seemed to know his name,

where he came from or when, or even

whether he spoke English; he simply nodded

when we pointed out how many of each,

his thick fingers, surprisingly delicate,

placing each in a brown paper bag,

sending us kids on our way back home

where whatever small crime we may

have committed earlier in the day would

imediately be forgiven and expunged.

Even the body of Christ could not compete;

even the sun looked brighter and fuller

when shining through the greasy window

of that small bag, its warmth rising,

as if the day were something you could

keep close, hold on to, consume.

MOTHER AND CHILD

 

Just across the street, where yet another

sleek, modern apartment complex has risen,

seemingly overnight, I can spy the figure

of a woman in one window, many stories up,

gently swaying, her baby blanketed and held closely,

moving perhaps to a music which only they

can hear, or to the silence they share between

them, framed within this moment, far above

the winter groans of traffic below, a maddening

wind rushing the clouds along, rattling the

tiny metal doors of street lamps and flagpoles,

bending the trees one way, then another.

I look away, only for a moment, and of course

they are gone, the window glass shimmering with

winter blues, an amber-tinted lightbulb

reflected like a distant star, slowly receding

from view on such a cold and bitter morning,

just now beginning to stir, just now

beginning to wake into the story of itself.

A CALL IN THE NIGHT

 

What to make, then, of this lone bird calling out, long before the first glimmer of morning light? Maybe she has dreamed a human dream, I think, and woke in a terrible fright. Or maybe, like all of us, she just wanted to make sure that the world was still here. She hears the sound of her own voice echoing, one small proclamation among the silence of leaves and stars, her voice declaring only her own bird-ness. She feels the breeze, the air shifting imperceptibly around her song, feels the breath of something larger stirring in the dark. And she is at ease once again.

RASPBERRIES IN NOVEMBER

 

Walking my daughter home from school,

the autumnal sun clear and bright

all around us -- though the wind is sharp,

undeniable, an uninvited guest looking

for a vacant place to settle in.

We stop to pick the few remaining

raspberries along the way. They are cool

to the touch, trembling slightly,

tiny pistils of hair standing upright

on their flesh, offering back to us the rain,

sun, and soil of the season's passing.

She picks one, and places it in my hand,

while I reach for two more at the top,

placing them into her palms one at a time.

Sweetness offered, and sweetness

returned, I think to myself. So simple.

"This is the best raspberry that I've ever

tasted in my life," she exclaims.

She has said as much more than twice

over the summer. You would be forgiven

for thinking it mere exaggeration,

a childish excitement, but I'm quite certain

that it has been true each time,

as it is here and now. For both of us.

SCATTERED

 

So many different rains tonight,

their slender gray thoughts

scattered everywhere at once.

Perhaps the wind can somehow

bring these factions together;

perhaps by morning a consensus

may at last be reached.

THE HAT

 

Today the wind rushes up, seemingly

from the other side of the world,

not even tired from the journey,

barely pausing to consider the withered

leaves from last fall, or the plastic

chairs it tosses to the littered sidewalk;

it takes your favorite hat without apology

as if in celebration of itself, drags it

through the grocery store parking lot,

slowing just long enough to keep

you chasing, your hat turning and tumbling

mindlessly out into the busy street,

as you continue to follow, the world

around you fading, your awkward body

bent low to the ground, arms

reaching out for this one small thing,

one small piece of familiar, that you

suddenly fear you may never touch again.

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.