LEARNING TO LISTEN

 

If I am being honest, brother, my last words to you were untrue, releasing you from this life, this body, this bundle of worry in the way I thought I was required to do. As if words mattered, mine or anyone else's in that moment. As if you needed my permission for release. I told you that I would be alright. Another lie. I told you that I love you, words we never spoke to each other in this life. Some things, we learned early on, need not be spoken. Some things are weakened in their telling. If I am being honest, I saw no need to pray for intervention, as the others did. You were on your way. I felt that elusive door open and close, my hand resting upon your chest, felt the air in the room shift. What could anyone say then? The silence settled in. I could only listen, in ways I am learning still.

I HAD NEARLY FORGOTTEN

 

I had nearly forgotten the poem

you had sent to me, one

that I had tucked away

to read in a quieter moment,

a moment much like this --

the low winter sun sifting through

the delicate maps of frost

upon the window glass,

blue folding imperceptibly into

gold and back again,

and each word offering itself

like the smallest of birds,

the kind my young daughter paints

with two quick brushstrokes,

each small movement threaded

to another, lifting the whole

of the sky with ease.

AT THE NATURALIZATION CEREMONY

 

The families begin arriving early, the men in freshly

pressed suits, pocket squares, the women in bold patterned

dresses and colors that defy the gray drizzling skies,

their faces without exception beaming with light,

young children at their sides looking up,

knowing this day to be something extraordinary.

"There are people who live here who hate this country,"

the young woman from Colombia explains

to a local newscaster, shaking her head, "but to us,

this is still The Promised Land. It's everything."

I can't help but think of my own ancestors, who, too,

arrived with nothing, learned to speak this strange, unruly

language, drive cars, fight this nation's many wars.

It's hard to imagine my steely-eyed great-grandfather,

never caught smiling in a photo, wearing a face of

such unabashed joy. But what do I know of another's heart?

I know only this moment, this day, this swell of pride

as these new citizens make their way up Kellogg Boulevard,

their small flags waving in the chilly damp air.

It is as though a hundred or more makeshift boats were

setting out, each on a separate but similar course.

Even when they have all but vanished from view,

their voices can still be heard singing, laughing,

proclaiming -- so many different dialects, different

songs, so many different ways to say Home.

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.

DENOMINATION BLUES

 

When my mother found Jesus again,

after narrowly surviving death by her own hand,

she began opening doors to seemingly every

church which may have housed him there.

She refused to recognize the Catholic church,

which placed a pope between oneself and the Lord,

praying to people and statues, while Lutherans

were simply too formal and reserved.

The Primitive Baptists believed that to enter

into the Kingdom you must also wash the feet

of others, as the Lord himself had done,

become a servant to the servant among us.

But there was no music there, and didn't

the psalms themselves command us to make

a joyful noise unto the Lord, loud enough

to be heard out there among the stars?

The Seventh Day Adventists seemed kind and

welcoming enough, but my brother and I protested

missing our Saturday morning cartoons.

What my mother truly loved, and where she felt

at home, was listening in earnest to those

fire and brimstone sermons, what she called

the old time religion, which threatened continually

the burning, lashing, and gnashing of teeth.

She would nod in agreement, strangely

comforted by the litany of righteous violence,

of Jesus returning next time with a sword.

She was happy to not be amongst those left,

waking on Judgement Day to find a world strange

and unwelcoming, hovering between life and

death, with no way then of repentance

or altering the course of all that was to come.

CHANGING THE ENDING

 

How many of those old children's tales

have I found myself editing and adding to

while reading to my young daughter?

How many children were spared at the last from

becoming some cretin's favorite meal,

how many kindly animals saved from the axe?

What kind of mother sells her kids to the gypsies?

What kind of father could somehow be talked

into leaving his children alone in the woods,

hungry and terrified, with only the birds

and breadcrumbs to help lead them home?

Even poor Francis, that inquisitive and mischievous

badger, was threatened with a spanking

for failing to fall asleep on command, with me,

grudgingly, having to explain the meaning

of the word, so foreign was the idea in our home.

Things are very different in this telling of ours,

a world apart from that of her father's.

One day, perhaps, she may understand how

I somehow altered my own narrative, and

therefore hers, simply by being the father who

stayed, who chose to do so every moment.

Though there are still many days when I long

to change the story, if only by slowing it down,

pausing before the next turn of the page.

Every small moment has somehow become

my favorite, every adventure the greatest one yet.

I am only beginning to understand, dear reader,

and I confess, I never want this story to end.

A ROLL OF FILM

 

Who knows how many years it lay hidden,

slumbering in that corner of the desk drawer,

framed within its oak walls and shadow,

time slowly unspooling in either direction

around it, the constellations of dust

forming and reforming in a world which

from here must seem only a rumor.

When I retrieved them from the photo shop,

there wasn't much to see -- shapeless

clusters of dark and light merging uneasily,

bursts of summer sun breaking through,

or what might have been a face, or a shoulder,

impossible to distinguish one from the other.

This is the way of all memory, I imagine.

But one image survived to show you,

standing in the doorway, your back turned

to the camera, that long black coat

concealing your frame, Christmas lights

on the tree blurred as if in motion.

I like to think you were smiling, your unshaven

face tilted slightly to one side, half hidden,

your secrets, as always, held closely.

From this distance, it is impossible to tell

if you were leaving or just arriving,

so fitting for you, brother, who could not

stay here long, but waited patiently

until today to pass through once more.