ODE TO THE NORTHERN STATES POWER PLANT, circa 1974

 

In the damp stillness of summer, and long into the fall,
we would hear its buzz and crackle,
a continuous drone below the surface of things,
as I watched from the slightly uneven steps
of our foster home across the street on Atwater.

It seemed, to me, to be a city unto itself,
living and breathing, strung together by endless wire
and cables, thick coils, and transformer poles,
lights, near and far, signaling like lazy stars at all hours
in a time signature which continually eluded me.

I could while away the better part of a day perched
in front of the plate glass window, gazing
at the enormous trucks, their tires tall as doorways,
their lifts gleaming above the sunlit trees.

I didn't know where my mother and father had gone,
or why, only that their stories did not converge
with mine; but I liked the grown-ups here,
who laughed easily, and spoke without shouting,

I liked the smoke and the hum of our humble street,
and those men in their white hard hats
who arrived daily, with their clunky black lunchboxes
and their clunky black work boots, men
who held the structure of our daily lives together,

driving back and forth through the heavy iron gates,
past the signs reading Danger: Keep Out,
and past the razor wire reaching innocently from
one angle of blue sky to the next.

TELLING STORIES

 

When I remember now those bars and restaurants

along the avenue -- most of them long gone

and forgotten, along with those hopelessly younger

versions of ourselves -- I remember, too,

how you loved telling stories about everyone

within your line of sight, inventing detailed narratives

that were alternately comical, or tragic, sometimes

outlandish, sometimes quite believable.

You knew -- for your own belief in the story

was always essential -- who was on their first date,

and who was on their last, who was celebrating

their daughter's graduation, and who was in mourning;

you knew the man at the bar was out on parole

by the way he clutched his fork, eyes darting like silverfish,

knew which bartender was skimming money,

and which wrote poetry on the backs of napkins.

Now that you have returned so abruptly to silence

and to myth, I can't help but wonder

what you might have said about us, sitting there,

observing, as though we held some secret wisdom.

Would you have invented a better ending

for us, separately or together, one with a bit of nuance,

some humor, or at least a hint of romance?

Might there be an opportunity for redemption?

Sometimes I imagine our stories go on without us,

while we go about our routines, planning

and plotting, setting one book down to reach

for another, endlessly distracted, the lives

we once thought absolute becoming less and less

believable, in need of reconsideration.

SPARRING

 

My young hands are slow, hopelessly so, hardly

equipped for the instinctual jab and reach

required for this dance; my flat feet, likewise, reluctant

to lift themselves from the cool kitchen linoleum.

This is as close as we will get to an embrace,

my brother and I, the palms of his hands held out

toward me, waving, circling, shifting the air between us,

hands which look like larger versions of my own.

Still in high school, he proudly wears his silver satin

jacket from the White Bear Lake Boxing Club,

the rust-colored spatters of blood, who knows whose,

along its front and arms a badge of honor.

"Protect your head," he reminds me, repeating it,

having twice had his own nose broken of late.

This is the true gospel he is preaching,

fire and brimstone in each of his teenage fists,

where all of his sorrow, anger, and betrayal entwine,

speaking with blunt certainty all that he cannot;

and though I flinch, I know that he would not hit me

in the face, not intentionally, but merely brushes

against my cheek slightly, delicately, my periphery

catching only the blur of sudden motion, of autumn light

shifting through the broken branches of trees,

the movement of human or animal already gone,

just to show that he can, just to remind me

how quickly things can come at you in this life,

and how quickly they can all just disappear.

TWO DREAMS

 

The first night you came to me in sleep, we were

back at the old apartment, everything exactly

as it had been nearly two decades before,

mildew seeping through its basement walls,

silverware rattling atop the refrigerator,

cats circling our feet, slipping in and out of view.

You walked into the room, already knowing

what I was thinking, explaining that you had only

brought some things to the consignment shop,

and not to worry now that you were home.

"There's something I want to show you," you said,

making your way to the kitchen, white shopping bag

at your side making a sharp, crackling sound.

The second night, your face appeared perplexed,

your smile sheepish and uncertain, as if you

had just begun to realize the absence of your body,

the dusty amber sunlight softening the edges

of your elbows and shoulder blades.

You were frail, as you were the last time I saw you,

seemingly growing smaller before my eyes.

You said you didn't know what had happened,

that you only remembered falling asleep

in the same familiar bed we once had shared,

only to wake in this shadowland, land of in-betweens

which you never claimed to believe in.

This time when you turned, I meant to speak,

but instead awoke against my will.

Now, the days are rainy, the weeks stretching

into months, and the months into a greater silence.

You have not returned, though I am still here

in the next room, among the dust and the bookshelves,

waiting to see whatever it is you have found.

STRANGERS

 

Maybe we never know each other in the end,

never see past the bright reflecting surface of things,

the innumerable masks we slip into as easily as

our own flesh when waking into morning.

More than once you told me that I was

inscrutable, even after all those years of breathing

the same air, sharing the same silence

and secrets, dreaming between the same four walls.

But I misread you too, love, thought you were

stronger than you were, never knowing

how precarious your balance was on that ledge

between the most ordinary of days

and your own private oblivion. Forgive me

for thinking your stubbornness was only a virtue,

that the well you drew from would be enough

to keep you alive, no matter what lies your

tireless and wayward mind may have fed you.

I imagined you old, the grand dame of the avenue,

wheeling your rickety shopping cart back home

from the co-op, raising your skinny arms

in indignation at the cars and buses who refused

to stop and acknowledge your status.

Maybe we are merely strangers at the end

of it all, no better or worse than when we began;

though I wish you were here to tell me

how wrong I am, how foolish, that we knew each other

as well as two people could, and that if we met

again, every year between and behind us forgotten,

we would want to know each other

as we had before, shy with our first glances,

circling, searching for just the right word,

the right moment, the right door to open, to enter

this life all over again.

THE THINGS WE MISS

 

There are things, near the end of our time together,

that I will never miss -- the petty and pointless arguments

forgotten the following day, only to make room

for the next, and the next, our bodies passing each other

in the narrow hallway en route to our separate rooms,

the thick, weighted silence clinging to the walls

like spiderwebs. that sense of estrangement.

But today -- the first warm sun of spring on this earth

without you -- I recall instead those long Sunday mornings

lounging in bed with The Times and bagels from

the Bruegger's down the street, the inevitable buttery

crumbs on the candy-striped sheets you bought

on sale from Target, and rich, strong coffee chasing

away the lingering fog of late night whiskey.

I remember the long walks from one end of the avenue

to the other, not turning back until we could see

the river snaking between buildings, throwing sparks.

I miss the mundane and unexpected -- being able to ask you

the name of some character actor from the 1940s,

or how to pronounce a word I had stumbled across

in a novel so that I wouldn't embarrass myself in public.

And I remember when, weeks after the separation,

you stopped by my tiny, disheveled studio, not wanting

sex, or residual romance, but merely to warm your

feet -- permanently chilly -- against the back of my legs

in bed. "For old time's sake," you smiled innocently.

I was surprised to be missed at all, surprised

at your request, so simple and immediate, both of us

laughing slightly in that fundamental warmth,

lying together without wanting, blood rising to meet blood

in mutual recognition, then continuing, as they must,

on separate courses, each having known the way

long before we ever came to be.

ELEGY FOR A NON-CONFORMIST

 

You worried a lot in those days about whatever

was deemed "selling out" -- although, from this distance,

the years piled up like so much clutter, I am still

not quite certain what you meant by that.

We all wanted, in our own unassuming ways,

to be outside the mainstream, conformity

being the common enemy of the creative soul.

We wanted somehow to be the diamond in the ash heap,

while remaining anonymous enough to observe.

But you were so adamant about it all, so unwavering

in your stance. Buying a house, having kids,

driving a car, getting married, anything you viewed

as commercial, or part of the American dream

was on your list -- and the list was not up for debate.

If you were here now, I would tell you simply

that you never needed to try so hard.

No one would have mistaken you for ordinary.

But you have left now, in your own way, with neither

ceremony nor instruction, rejecting, too,

all the everyday things we do here to mourn,

smoothing and carving our stones, writing our tributes.

Closure is the word we use, knowing that

there must be a suture for the wound, permanent

though it may be, doing our humble best with

our thin and fraying thread, our words, our words,

our hopelessly mundane and routine ways.