MY FATHER'S FACE

 

How many times, during those early years

of childhood, did I imagine the angled ridge of his jawline,

sharp with stubble, rough to the touch,

or freshly shaved, pinkish and smooth, smelling

of Aqua Velva aftershave, rye whiskey,

the faint residue of Lucky Strikes.

How I imagined, too, his ears, their lobes thick

and dangling like bells, his nose -- sometimes wide,

sometimes narrow -- dark pores oily with sweat --

and, of course, I tried hard to see his eyes,

their size and shape, what light might have been

captured there, the level of their questioning,

the depth of their feeling or recognition.

My mother, having not a single photograph

to show, said only that if I wanted to see

my father's face, I could just look in the mirror.

But to me, it might as well have been

the face of God, Jesus, or Job, those mythical

faces seen only in my imagination.

It was, after all, the face that my mother

once held, smiled back at, and breathed in deeply,

if only for that moment, the face that would

refuse, again and again, to look upon my own.

Though it was hard to imagine even

a narrow smile upon that face; and equally as hard

to conjure a look of sorrow or regret

brought forth by the burden of his leaving.

It was, I realize now, the face that was

always there, face beneath my own, long before I could

see or remember, its own shroud and palimpsest,

forever turning and turning away,

even now as I write these lines, a mask

of interiors silent as river stone, unraveling on sight,

a tale to be believed only by its absence.

LITTLE TREE

 

When my daughter was born, not

so very long ago -- entering this world early,

small enough to cradle in the palm

of my outstretched hand -- a friend gifted

our family a fig tree planted in her name,

thousands of miles from the cool, white hospital rooms

we called home during those first few weeks.

This morning, the rockets again drawing

their wordless script across that ancient landscape,

obliterating much, erasing the prayers

of the many and the few, their message

unmistakable, familiar, everything seems closer,

visceral, as sudden and startling as a punch.

I think again of that little tree, giver of

shade and light, respite, oxygen, that seemingly

endless ladder of knots and hidden doorways

for young, skinny arms and legs to climb,

stretching its coils of roots tentatively into a soil

continually scarred and shuddering with uncertainty;

little tree, little lamp, beginning and ending of

every fable, making its way -- as it must --

upward into the bright expanse of sky.

MY DAUGHTER RISES EARLY

 

My daughter rises early, and after gulping down

her breakfast cereal, begins to rummage

through her large collection of stuffed animals,

piled one on top of another in an oversized

plastic bucket, spilling over from the edges of

her bed, hiding silently in dusty corners.

She asks for two large bags, having decided, between

breakfast and getting dressed for school,

that most -- if not all of them -- must go.

So it's goodbye to the giggling Elmo, to raccoon,

and to Bear, who we left that time, and found again

safe and sound at the desk of our public library,

goodbye to Fred and Angelina, that kind pair of cats,

who must -- she reminds me -- stay together,

lest they be unhappy for the next child they are with;

the idea of another kid finding joy and comfort

makes her happy, which makes me feel somewhat

embarrassed by my sorrow, this sense of loss,

as if something living were being shown the door,

their painted eyes looking back at the rooms

they are leaving so soon, this kingdom of childhood

they, too, thought would last just a bit longer.

HOW ARE YOU?

 

In this country -- forever in a hurry, forever

distracted by the fast word and the fast dollar --

when someone asks, "How are you?",

they immediately begin speaking of their own day,

their family, a medical procedure they will be

having the following week -- or they simply continue

walking, hardly expecting an answer

or even acknowledgement. It is, for the most part,

the verbal equivalent of a nod or a wave, polite

and yet, if we are being honest, largely meaningless.

But I come from a very northern people --

reserved and sincere to a fault --

with little regard or use for small talk.

Such a question is regarded as personal, even intrusive,

and the one asking should be prepared for

a long and tangled story, personal grief or love

confessed, or a long buried secret that had

been waiting decades for the sweet air of release.

So when I asked this of you, who had just

traveled for hours by plane to visit family and friends,

and to sit next to me on this worn red sofa,

and you began weeping, softly at first,

shuddering, open and unapologetic

with your tears, it was a language I easily understood.

"No one has asked me that in so long,"

you managed to say, as we embraced with no need

for further words or translation, letting the waves

ease slowly into stillness and quiet,

the safe passage of another day opening,

the wonder of its ordinary light, thin along the horizon,

toward a country in which we both could live.

ELEGY FOR MY NIECE

 

I was surprised that you came to visit

that morning in my dream, having departed

this world so suddenly only days before;

but there you were, lying peacefully outside

the plate glass window of that musty basement

apartment I had not entered in years.

Your eyes were bright and smiling, bearing

no weight or bruising from within,

no residue of the earthly sorrow which you tried

continually to numb, to bury, to exchange

for another's on the installment plan

of what became your life. You were just a kid

at that moment, as you had always been,

lounging without care in the long summer grass,

nothing but sunlight and time holding you.

Yet when I stepped slowly toward you,

you floated backward, pulled like a stage prop,

the space between us immovable, solid

as a body neither of us could see or lay claim to;

and when I reached to touch the glass

you were already gone, carried on waves

of what I could not know or save you from.

Dear niece, dear Ophelia, forgive my absence,

for staying on this dry island of earth,

as if these long silent roads were my own,

as if I had any idea where any of them

might eventually lead.

JASPER

 

When I was a kid, I felt invisible more often

than not -- sometimes through a combination

of will and imagination, and sometimes

through the unseeing eyes of adults,

voices prone to shouting, from the kitchen

or the living room, "Get those kids

out of here! I can't hear myself think."

It was good, then, to have a vanishing act,

to know when to slip away, and when to stay gone.

Now that I am growing older,

gray, unassuming, fumbling for

my reading glasses, I again

feel myself becoming part of the unseen

or what my mother and aunts

used to refer to as a Jasper,

that eternal stranger passing through, ostensibly

harmless, whose name no one could recall.

There's no loneliness like a crowd,

and while this is neither comfort

not revelation, it is not without advantages.

In the coffee shop, I order without

small talk, I sit, off to the side, sketching a few words

the way an artist might sketch

a tree, a cloud, a figure in the distance

a world I may enter, as I always have, disturbing

no one in my coming or going.

WITHOUT

 

Some absences

take up so much room;

some silences

have grown too large

to leave the way

they came in.