A SUDDEN DOWNPOUR

 

The sky opens without warning, as it will

this time of year, while a woman races across

the parking lot of a local department store,

weighted bags on either shoulder, her two

young children holding up the hem of her long

summer dress as though it were a tent.

I can hear the lilt of their voices rising

to meet their mother's, hear the wet slapping

of their flip-flops against the pavement;

and I can hear their laughter ringing out

between words, a sound that is easily understood

in any language, welcoming this sudden storm.

This is only rain, after all, not the hot metal

of bombs, no more to be feared than the sound

of their breathing or names spoken aloud.

For now, their mother keeps the sky away.

For now, this is all the shelter they will need.

ROGER

 

They said you were trouble even back then,

hanging from the highest ledge

you could find, cadging smokes from

the older boys, proud to add a new curse word

to your ever-expanding arsenal.

I knew only that you were my friend,

no better or worse than the rest of us project brats,

in and out of the system, wandering our

small world freely, mostly without consequence,

scavengers and explorers not expected

home until the blue-tinged halos of

streetlights flickered up and down the block.

Years later, visiting our foster mother

for what would be the last time,

I asked about you, and where you might be.

"Oh," she sighed, as if blowing out

a puff of imaginary smoke, while gazing

down at the gray-tinged sidewalk, "You don't

want to know about Roger. Believe me."

I knew that she meant jail, knew she meant

one wrong turn leading to another, and another,

until no escape route could be found,

I knew that she meant you never really stood

a chance, a born and raised statistic.

I made my own mistakes, neither unique

nor decisive -- but I am still here

to speak of you, to remember your wildness

as the innocence it was, your laughter

pure as you raced through the ditch grass,

rough stars from the sticker bushes

clinging to your skinny ankles, running simply

for the sake of running, or maybe

just to show the rest of us

where that trampled path might lead.

WITH APOLOGIES TO DR. WILLIAMS

 

So much depends upon

the stuffed mouse,

frayed and

covered in cat spit,

hidden within a blue

running shoe

at the start of day.

EVENING DISPATCH

 

I swatted, quite

absentmindedly, a fly

pausing on a patch

of dusty window glass,

the fat yellowing

sleeve of old newspaper

suddenly a weapon,

the cobalt sheen

and barely discernible

wings of its body leaving

a small apostrophe

of blood not far from

my brother's face

and name printed near

the top of the page, fading,

startling me anew,

as if I had just stumbled

upon this news, as if

I had been unaware --

blissfully so --

for all this time.

SITTING WITH THE SICK CAT

 

We are up early, neither of us having rested

much during the night -- up and down

like sleepwalkers -- the neighbors yet to stir,

the first sunrise of autumn yet to break through

the chill-dark distance of the window.

The weather channel on the television plays

softly some French music from another century,

while I glance occasionally at the shifting patterns

of colors and light on the screen, the familiar

outlines of our state, country, then world,

then only the endless turn of borderless sky.

My daughter sleeps, safe and sound,

in the next room, growing taller and stronger

by the hour. But this small creature, having become

the center of her young life, struggles

to find the simplest comfort, circling my lap,

purring, wheezing, nodding off, letting

out a throaty exclamation that is part pain,

part surprise at the very insistence of it.

For the moment, this is our entire universe,

the hum and hush of it, the secrets

and complexities of its motion, the hot

pinpricks of starlight that pierce through flesh,

our common desire to understand.

There is not much I can do beyond this,

a feeling that as a father I am long familiar with,

but stubbornly refuse to get used to.

Our weariness is our common song this morning,

our breathing a shared language welcoming --

or at least acknowledging -- whatever

this uncertain day may bring.

MY MOTHER'S SAINT PAUL

 

Before my mother moved to the other side

of the country, leaving only her guitar for safekeeping,

she wanted to drive the city one last time,

to claim and to remember, startling me with

a sudden and unbidden openness,

I had never in my life witnessed from her.

She drove slowly, intentionally so, in that big white boat

of a car, down University Avenue, a street

we never ventured near as kids, nothing but

adult bookstores, porn theaters, and seedy bars.

We heard stories, locked the car doors when riding past.

Those old ghosts were gone now, along with

the small honky tonks she once played, underage,

the low-tiled ceilings yellow with smoke,

barely tall enough to accommodate an upright bass.

We rounded the smooth asphalt encircling Como Lake,

the zoo just up the hill, the same trickling waterfall

where as kids we were chased off by security.

The White Castle where she worked as a teenager

was still serving up greasy sliders with onions,

and the baseball diamond at Mechanical Arts school

where she played with the boys after school

looked very much the same to her eyes.

She speaks, lastly, of the childhood home

that never quite was, the collective nightmare

that she and her sisters somehow survived.

What does it mean, I wondered, retracing the maps

of our past, searching for structure, for patterns,

a road back that might in turn lead safely out?

We want, if nothing else, a narrative that makes sense.

This is the house where she learned to play,

she says, practicing for hours until her fingers bled,

and this is where she first saw snow falling

at the age of six, running outside in audible wonder,

this skinny girl from the hollers of Tennessee,

looking up and up, tasting each frozen star

upon her tongue, so cold they startled each time,

their small light disappearing on contact.

HOUSE OF WONG

 

I never knew what they spoke of, my mother

and aunt, on those lazy Saturday afternoons in summer,

safe within the sanctuary of that restaurant,

always busy, its large temple-like doors painted

black and red, trimmed in extravagant gold,

a world far removed from the inquisitive ears of children.

We could not have imagined what our mothers

had lived through, the house of early horrors

they had endured daily as children, how the bodies

of men became threats against them,

could not have known the senseless anger of

a father who denied even their existence,

could not have known the cause and effect

set in motion long before we arrived.

We knew only the weekly ritual of their meeting,

their sisterly fellowship over greasy egg foo yong

and moo goo guy pan, the endless bowls of

sticky rice that occasionally made its way back to us

in those small white containers, wire handles

and waxy folds, stamped with a stately red pagoda.

If we were very lucky, a fortune cookie might be

tucked away in a purse, something simple

and sweet, the mysterious messages inside them

offering a riddle, or a bit of wisdom for our

childhood minds to ponder, considering as we cracked

them open what might happen next.