IN THE ABSENCE OF

 

Lately, my daughter has been having brief episodes of leaving this world. What were once generally referred to as spells. Or perhaps, it is the world that is turning away, walking past her periphery and into nothingness. The world of things simply needing a moment to collect itself. The world of images suddenly with nothing new to offer. Perhaps she is discovering, as she must, that the universe is made mostly of absence, that form is yet another emptiness, and emptiness that which we perceive as form. "Just now," she says, "when I was talking to you, for a minute I couldn't see or hear you." "But I was right here," I remind her, "Even when you thought I had gone away." I want her to remember this, many years from now, want her to rest easy in the absence I have created solely for her.

GHAZAL LOOKING EAST, THEN WEST

I come from a language that has no future tense,

where love itself is measured simply by standing still.

My mother's ancestors brought bad habits but good songs,

their hungry ghosts lingering around the whiskey still.

You told me once that loyalty was a defect of character.

My heart is a three-legged dog following you still.

Perhaps it's not love if something doesn't get broken.

When everything shatters, even the world becomes still.

My daughter spied a dolphin in the Mississippi last week.

A child's eye can do that, can hold a great river still.

We listen closely to the arguments of winter crows,

the air between each shriek all the more still.

My thoughts weren't all that interesting, so I let them go.

They wore themselves out, pretending to be still.

MATHEMATICS

 

My scalp prickled with tiny beads of anxiety. Everyone had left school but me, and Mr. Heaney, who hovered like an unwelcome shadow, rising occasionally from his desk, hands clasped behind his back, his New Balance sneakers silent in their slow, measured steps. The blackboard had been wiped clean, dark as the night sky, only a few ghostly wisps of another world showing through. I was trying and failing, trying and failing, at long division, the paper wearing through from my endless corrections. "The universe is made of numbers," I was told again and again. "You must know this, if you are to know anything." I did not doubt this, though it was a language the Creator had somehow chosen to keep from me. I labored on as the afternoon light gradually shifted, and the clock ticked out its seconds, each with a small sense of finality. I could imagine the invisible threads connecting all things, though I gave them neither name nor meaning. I could hear the voices of summer outside rising and falling, could almost make out the words that elicited their sudden laughter, though it all seemed, in those moments, to be light years away.

SAYING GRACE

 

When we were kids, we folded our

small peasant hands, freshly washed,

into imaginary cathedrals, mouthing

the humble words as instructed

to our invisible father, his earthly son,

and, strangely, a ghost which we

could only presume to be benevolent.

We prayed in earnest, though sometimes

in haste or with unappreciated humor,

prayed beneath that familiar painting

of an old man, also in prayer, weary

yet grateful for his daily crust of bread.

He seemed somehow holy, and yet

as ordinary as any among us.

I wondered if he might offer up one

on behalf of us poor sinners, who

always seemed on the cusp of eviction,

of fleeing again by cover of night,

our offerings too small to be noticed,

our debts to the Lord, and to those

who claimed to be in his service, unpaid.

GHAZAL WRITTEN ON A SMALL PATCH OF WINTER SKY

 

That indescribable blue after a winter storm

reminded me of you, your eyes filled with distance.

What could I have said to keep you here longer,

when what I say now must reach through every distance?

God does not speak our language or write us letters,

our words merely fragments thrown into great distance.

There is a strange joy in singing deliberately off-key.

Any singing we can manage is a way to close the distance.

When I was younger, I walked without second thought.

Now, my bones upon waking remind me of each distance.

It's a kind of blessing to let each loss have its say.

Not all of us live to sign our names upon that distance.

Still, I never meant to say to let go of this world, brother.

Forgive me. You know I can never fill such a distance.

RASPBERRIES IN NOVEMBER

 

Walking my daughter home from school,

the autumnal sun clear and bright

all around us -- though the wind is sharp,

undeniable, an uninvited guest looking

for a vacant place to settle in.

We stop to pick the few remaining

raspberries along the way. They are cool

to the touch, trembling slightly,

tiny pistils of hair standing upright

on their flesh, offering back to us the rain,

sun, and soil of the season's passing.

She picks one, and places it in my hand,

while I reach for two more at the top,

placing them into her palms one at a time.

Sweetness offered, and sweetness

returned, I think to myself. So simple.

"This is the best raspberry that I've ever

tasted in my life," she exclaims.

She has said as much more than twice

over the summer. You would be forgiven

for thinking it mere exaggeration,

a childish excitement, but I'm quite certain

that it has been true each time,

as it is here and now. For both of us.

MUSIC BOX

 

My daughter turns the match-thin handle

of the music box, its tiny metal teeth

plucking out "Love Me Tender"

with the bright clarity of a child's lullaby,

slowing and increasing the tempo

of this tune she has learned this way,

its simple notes rising and falling

from her steady outstretched palm.

When I was her age, my older brother

and I rode in the back of a sweltering hot

station wagon while a calm and serious voice

broke through the radio announcing

that Elvis Presley, a man who seemed

to me to be from another planet, had died

suddenly, at his home in Memphis.

Death was a gray and mysterious thing;

but I knew that it meant an absence,

a silence which no one came back from.

Yet music lives upon air, much longer

than breath alone, writing and rewriting

itself at will -- and here it is again

on this most ordinary day in autumn,

dry leaves tapping at the window glass;

a day made all the more lovely by its brevity,

and because we are here to speak of it.

Which is to say that there is no need

for the saying, no need at all. This song,

however small, will do just fine.