HEART

 

I always thought I was simply too shy

for all those dances in the cavernous school

gymnasium, shadowing the tiled wall

while trying to appear casual, prickly sweat

mingled with drugstore perfume,

and the lights never quite dim enough,

young voices rising above the pulse of music,

searching out each other, everyone

seemingly too close and too far at once.

But perhaps it was you all along,

faulty timekeeper, clumsy blood hammer

building your secret rooms, nail by crooked nail.

You never listened well, that much

is for certain, never kept a steady beat,

just made it up as you went along,

always slightly ahead or behind,

daydreaming yourself nearly out of a job.

Heart, those bright-eyed teenage girls

have long since waltzed calmly into middle age,

and I am no jazz poet. Let's sing one

of the old songs tonight, something sweet

and simple, one that begins with barely

a whisper. You know the one.

Stay with me for just a while longer.

ECHOCARDIOGRAM

 

There was a time, not so long ago,

when a young woman's hand sweeping

gently, purposefully across your bare chest

would spark a rush of movement

within the blood, stir the recognition

of one flesh meeting another, somehow

both new and ancient at once.

But today you have crossed a threshold

of sorts, where this young woman,

who balances perfectly kindness and business,

measures every bruised and weary chamber

of your heart. "Breathe in," she intones,

"Now stop. Hold that breath...Good."

From the corner of your eye, you can see

the black and white of the ultrasound,

like a closeup of the moon, or years ago

seeing your daughter for the first time,

hiccupping within her mother's frame.

You think, too, of the Buddha, said to pass

into prajnanibbana this way, reclined

on his left side, eyes half-closed, neither

looking nor looking away. But this,

this, you think, is merely a form of limbo,

the moment midway through the play

when the stage lights dim to a dusty blue

and the whole of the set is quickly rearranged.

You sit upright, button your shirt, surprised

by the sudden return of clinical light.

You thank her for her trouble, take the old soldier

in your chest -- by turns too fast, too slow,

too big for its own good -- meandering

down the hall, and out into the wintery day,

blustery and colorless, quietly resigned

to whatever might happen next.

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.