FIDELITY

 

She was always faithful

to you, she said.

It was only to herself

that she had sometimes

been untrue.

WHAT MY FATHER FOUND

 

My father says that he remembers nothing

after finding my grandmother, thrown as if by

force upon the kitchen floor, her blue eyes gone

blank as river stone, blood not red but black,

reaching as one hand did into the stillness of air,

the other held inward, as if cradling a book

which no one could have seen or deciphered.

He remembers the amber bottle of arsenic glinting

in sunlight, the maddening shouts of the crows,

the strange weight of his own breath hovering;

remembers walking slowly back to the car,

easing it up the gravel road to the Halverson's

to start up a game of afternoon baseball.

I cannot pretend to know his thinking in these

moments, or whether all thought simply fled.

Yet in my mind's eye I see him, unwashed jeans

dragging at the heel, the bill of his cap pulled low,

walking much the same as I did at that age,

hands in pockets, gazing vaguely at the ground.

I can see him kicking at the dirt, signaling,

his worn H&B bat suddenly connecting, startling

the barn swallows out of their secret chambers,

the thin, red stitching of the ball turning

and turning, fast upon itself, shooting past

the billowing tops of summer trees; and below,

the lengthening silhouette of that farm boy

running, running toward a fierce blinding light

where, for one imperceptible moment,

he somehow manages to all but disappear.

CELEBRATION'S END

 

Once, you thought you had all the time in the world. Maybe you did. But now the world is spending that time like a soldier on leave, throwing mountains of confetti for a party already nearing its end. The handful of guests remaining speak so softly, as if in code, imperceptibly moving away while standing still. The music, too, grows fainter, reduced to a residual hum, a melody remembered from childhood rising and falling again. You find yourself picking up the half-drained glasses, overflowing ashtrays, stacking mismatched dishes in the kitchen sink. It looks to have been quite the event, one that won't come around again. You only wish you could remember more. Who was that bird-like woman speaking your name so intimately, embracing you with abandon? What of that man leaning in too closely, talking politics all night, demanding your stance on the latest referendum? Next time you will take mental notes, leave a guestbook at the door for all to sign as they leave, hopefully still laughing, bright strands of paper clinging to their heels.

WHITE LAUNDRY

 

The world tonight breathes so slowly

that you might suspect it had stopped,

turned its body, like ours, toward the coolness

of the wall, the vast landscape of its dream.

Above the darkened windows outside,

lines of white laundry reach across the alley,

the ancient brick glowing amber on either side.

You can read their secret lives like leaves

in a bowl: the smoke-yellowed undershirts

of workingmen, the lace-trimmed slips

and sundresses, gauzy shawls and scarves

the ladies will wear to come before God

on Sunday morning, smiling, singing the songs

their grandmothers taught them long ago.

How lovely these ordinary clothes given rest,

given pause and dreams of their own

while awaiting the heft of the body's return,

while the body itself waits for a stirring

greater than itself. There is no hurry.

The songs continue singing without us.

The cobblestone below will echo our steps

in the morning, as if the day were new,

as if we had not been here all along.

WINTERIZING

 

My brother and I pulled the old ladder

from the loft of that damp, falling-down garage,

snapped the cold and grimy storm windows

into place one by one, our mother imploring us

from the earth below not to break our necks,

not to touch our fingers to those jagged

pieces not yet repaired, broken by flying balls

or an elbow thrown back in defense.

We caulked up the wind-trembling cracks,

closed off the uninsulated storage room,

hoisted great, thick sheets of plastic

over anything else left facing the light.

A new silence took root inside each room,

everything suddenly nearer, muffled.

Sometimes I imagined those sheets to be

sails, as if we were about to set forth

to a world that we could not yet fathom.

But only the darkened edges of trees

shook themselves occasionally, the vague

shapes of winter bodies passing outside.

You had to have faith that something out there

was being created, something both startling

and familiar coming back into focus,

so slowly, so tentatively that none of us

would have noticed, or bothered to say so.

MEETING MY FATHER

 

I was ten years old when I first met

the man, shaking hands in a shopping mall

parking lot, as my mother looked on,

unimpressed and uncertain as to whether

this was a wise idea for any of us.

He was tall, dressed in a courtroom suit

and tie, saying, "Good afternoon" with

the practiced ease of a natural salesman;

told my mother that I was a good looking kid,

as if I weren't standing there beside him,

as if he couldn't speak to me directly.

This man I had secretly dreamed of,

who had, by default, become the hero

and villain of every boyhood tale,

this man who by his absence alone

had all but defined me, seemed to me

in that moment to be unforgivably ordinary.

We had a polite lunch, the three of us,

conversation sporadic and strained.

There was much to avoid, though we were,

all of us, long adept at doing just that.

There were no tears and no explanations.

I sat to his right, at his suggestion,

two left-handed eaters avoiding elbows.

And he was right: We did not touch.

Not that day, or any day yet to come.

THE VERY FAMOUS COUPLE

 

The very famous couple strolled calmly past

while we sat outside at small wrought iron tables,

slurping at our IPAs and gazpacho,

pretending to not notice, or just barely.

They walked with the practiced ease of two

who had been together for many years,

and were long accustomed to being noticed,

he rawboned and weathered by design,

she a natural and unassuming beauty,

a local girl who we liked to claim as our own.

We had seen their movies on this very street,

seen their faces ten feet tall, passionately kissing.

We glanced up again as they moved past,

their large white shopping bags rocking gently

at their sides as their figures grew smaller.

"Did you see who that was?," someone asked.

Years later, we read that they had divorced,

heard the ugly rumors of drunkenness

and infidelity, police being called at all hours,

the kids being placed elsewhere to live.

We were right, I suppose, not to have said hello.

We were right to simply let them pass.