JUNK DRAWER

 

How it never yielded easily,

always jammed, always pulling

stubbornly to one side;

how it measured in its way

the insistence of your curiosity.

How it never seemed

to be full, always accepted

more and more, making room

within its shallow walls

for another stack of coupons,

restaurant matchbooks,

the padlocks without keys.

How you rarely found

whatever it was you were

searching for, there among

the spools of thread, the nails

and tape and bric-a-brac,

the random broken fixtures

and wires, toys and gadgets that

no one could now remember.

How it accepted your small hand,

fumbling blindly, making space

among the lost and forgotten.

How you inevitably walked away

with something, something

you did not know the name of,

something whose only purpose

in that moment was to be held

and carried at your side,

a thing of wonder once again.

ELVIS PRESLEY: JUNE 21, 1977

 

He knows, I think, that he is dying; suspects that we too know. We do, we do, all of us somehow believing that we are the only ones. All of us not wanting to know. His words stumble over themselves, rushing out, irrespective of order. His breathing is labored, uneven, sweat dangling from eyes grown distant as blue sky. But he smiles all the while, as if amazed to be here at all. He finds his way to the piano, fumbles for just the right tempo, starting fast, then pulling back. He finds the keys; or, more correctly, they find him. And in the pause before he begins, all else fades away. In this hush and this light, he is again that boy at the upright piano, singing gospel in the family room late into the night; singing whether others listened or not. Light years from this blue-lit stage, from this man so famous that we all believe we know him, so famous that the man himself has all but disappeared. He is hitting notes now that surprise even him, pulling them from some secret place he had nearly forgotten. He turns and smiles at the band, hovering between disbelief and absolute assuredness. He saves the best for last, sends it to the rafters, knowing something greater than himself has lifted it there. He stands and walks calmly, confidently toward a spotlight at the center of the stage. But the last note still lingers. And we want it to stay there, filling the spaces between us. We don't want him ever to arrive.

NUMBERS

 

How many years, brother, since the world of our birth stamped us and walked away? How can it be the year of your death again, so soon? As your dates fade, so do my own; the line between those dates the smallest bridge we'll ever hope to cross. Your place of address likewise has disappeared, along with telephone, labor union, and social security numbers; the baseball statistics you mapped meticulously when we were kids. What good are such figures now, and what good the weight and measurements of the body? Every number fades, every combination cancelling the other, until all that remains is an empty circle leading back and back to the inscrutable, singular You.

IF INDEED THERE IS A BODY

 If indeed there is a body

behind your body

and a body behind mine,

I wonder if they meet,

exchange stories or regrets,

touch without want or expectation;

or if they have reached an

understanding we never could,

where a shout is merely

an exclamation of joy

and that shroud of silence

merely the agreement

of all senses at once.

VALENTINE

 

The valentine I wrote for you just walked out the door, unfinished, with the unblinking haste of a lover scorned. God only knows where it's headed, or what it was thinking. It's snowing now -- thick, wet parentheses encompassing every breath, the wind throwing short, hard blasphemies at no one in particular. It's easy for something so small to get lost. Nevertheless, I hope it reaches you, fluttering and modest beyond reason, yet insistent enough that you bring it in -- out of kindness or curiosity -- from the unremitting cold.