YOU CAME TO ME AGAIN

You came to me again in my sleep, as if nothing had changed between us. You wanted to talk about old movies, talk about money and how it made no sense. I had longed for the sweetness of the mundane, the steady rhythm of the dripping faucet wearing away the porcelain of the bathroom sink, dust building its imaginary creatures below our feet. Most of all, I didn't want to tell you that you were gone, slipped silently from this world while you were unaware. But I wanted you to mourn the loss of yourself, as I have, this life of chores and small, fleeting pleasure, the stubborn yet fragile body which gave you so much trouble. Of course, you were better at explaining things, as you often did for me. The words I offer are half-formed and ordinary, hovering between us, neither moving nor standing still. Last week, your sister called to remind me that everyone in our dreams is but a different version of ourselves. If this is so, I am again talking to myself, while you are wondering whether to accept my explanation, whether to answer with words, or the silence we have agreed upon for so long. 

 

CANNED LAUGHTER

 

Most of the laughter we heard when

growing up did not come from the grownups

around us -- who seemed perpetually

glum, reserved in speech and movement --

but from the canned laughter rising

and falling from the small, dusty speakers

of bulky television sets -- sharp, tinny laughter

you could hear from the next room,

even if you had somehow missed the joke.

Even Saturday morning cartoons,

that most sacred of childhood rituals,

had a laugh track with which to instruct us,

not unlike the voices at church, hesitant

at first, then growing robust as their numbers

swelled and converged, demonstrating

to us when to sing out, if not precisely how.

Say what you will, but there's something

strangely reassuring in knowing

that all of that laughter from ages past --

the low, persistent titter, the chortle

and guffaw, the outright snort -- is there,

waiting patiently to be opened again,

in times of war and uncertainty,

when grief has once again shrouded us

in its oily rags, following us like an unremittent

beggar -- times not so unlike our own.

GHOST STORIES

 

Visiting the Finnish Lutheran Cemetery,

the small clapboard church leaning wearily toward

the empty highway, my cousin reminds me

of what the gravediggers told her, how the residents here

grow restless in the evening, walking and conversing,

as if not yet settled on this idea of being dead.

"But," she reminds me, by way of disclaimer,

"they have been known to partake in the whiskey."

Everyone has a ghost story around here:

restless ghosts walking the creaking staircase all night,

opening the heavy doors and windows, shaking

the rusty box springs of the bed, or the mischievous one

who locked the unsuspecting dog in the car overnight,

and the stubborn one who followed the family when

the farmhouse burned to the blackened ground.

My ghosts, by contrast, are so reserved, hardly stirring

from their bodies of air, speaking only from the measured

silence of the page, leaving even the dust in its place.

I told you, dear friend, to visit as often as you like,

test your presence in this once-familiar world,

read the poems you wrote when still a teenager,

amused, I would imagine, by what seemed

so important to you then. Haunt me as you like, love.

Come close. Hover, the way you sometimes did

when I worked, if only to see if you are in the words

I have not yet begun to write or understand.

THE AFTERNOON SHE DID NOT DIE

 

Well, we go on -- one hand floating weightless as a balloon,

the body pulling itself downward again.

Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind,

and the ocean is so vast before us.

Though a residue remains, like soot from

a long-neglected fire or a thumbprint on the soul,

and it belongs the way a bruise belongs,

the way our shadows spark and smolder without us,

solitary, when shut away for the night.

Today I walk with neither haste nor direction,

the sex and the sorrow of sad letter days

discarded, the fact of my name, age, and profession

lost to the angular wind. I carry your words

in one pocket, your silence in the other,

past the once-familiar storefronts of our past,

the soft glow of your childlike face gazing back at me

and back upon itself, a foreign postage stamp

on an antique postcard you bought but never sent.

How can I answer now, knowing this business of words,

this stooge's religion, to be diversion at best?

How can I speak when addressing you now means

addressing any tree, or cloud, or patch of grass?

You have grown vast by way of vanishing.

You always said it was an art, a trick you could not unlearn.

But we go on, each in our separate ways.

Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind.

But the body is such a stubborn guest,

unwilling to leave, despite the late hour.

We may as well settle in, make up the spare room.

WEDDING DRESS, NEVER WORN, FOR SALE

 

In the newspaper photo, no larger than

a postage stamp, it resembles most

our childhood idea of a ghost, with neither head

nor hands visible, walking away, directionless,

gently billowing from side to side;

or something you might come across

in a museum, a remnant of love and devotion

gone hopelessly out of fashion, pressed

and pinned behind a case of glass.

A thin, watery light, seemingly without source,

softens the edges along one side,

cuts an angle across the torso like the page

from a book suddenly stripped of words.

This is not our story to tell, though

we can't help but imagine the details --

the blistering late night arguments or withering

silence -- which lead, inevitably or not,

to this sudden change of course.

Someone else can slip into the story

now, change the names, rewrite the ending,

all while admiring the intricate stitch work

weaving in and out, the extravagant

and unnecessary ties, beads, and bows,

white cumulous clouds rising at either shoulder,

the small, angled windows of lace

we can very nearly peer through.

ADDICTION

 

You held your secrets close, as gently

as they would allow, as if they, too, were

wounded things, in need of your full and constant

attention, as if keeping them cocooned

in your cool, anemic room kept you both safe.

So much we did not and could not know,

so much you kept even from yourself.

You longed most for respite from this life,

its continual demands, its pettiness and pretense,

the futility you saw in its endless disguises.

You wanted to step outside of it all, time itself

racing past the window glass, frame by crooked frame.

What a shock, then, when it found you unaware.

What a shock when the pills swallowed you.

I still don't understand the simplest things

in this life -- like how to love and be loved without

fear, or how to explain to others that you were

never the measure of your illness alone.

I still don't know if the world, as you might

have said, is so bitter that we must wash it down

with something strong, or so very sweet

and wonderous that we must raise our glasses

again and again. You tell me. You tell me.

AT THE HISTORY CENTER

 

After exploring the wood-paneled rooms furnished with black rotary phones, cocktail trays, and TV consoles the size of refrigerators, my daughter and I climb the narrow ramp into the belly of a World War II C-47 aircraft, sitting for a moment in dim uncertainty, as the ghosts of this craft did decades earlier. We can see the light outside shifting from amber to gray and back again, sense the angled approach of large water, before the wing catches fire and the voices of those men -- hopelessly young -- return, bellowing above bomb blasts, terrified, cursing every God under the sun with words we do not use at home. My daughter clutches my arm, wonders aloud which of her classmates, soon to be entering third grade, would survive such a perilous mission. Only two or three, she decides solemnly. When the silence returns, it is jarring and final, the silence of all those lives, barely begun, layered on top of one another. But I can hear the cries of the soon-to-be dead behind us, starting up again, the same explosions drawing closer from every direction. We walk back into the sunlit lobby, wondering what we will have for lunch. Our sky is blue, and this day -- soon to be part of our past -- open before us.