MAN AND CROW

 

No one remembers now how or when, but the crow took to Grandpa Nels, and he took to the crow, until it began to follow him far into the field, the two of them talking about whatever it is that a man and a crow discuss -- the likelihood of rain, the ordinary things that matter most, or what it means to be alone on this earth. When he carried water from the well to the barn, again and again, the crow tagged along. When he fed the fox that slept in the shed, never bothering the turkeys in their pens, the crow kept watch. Grandma said the bird was so smart it could count and answer your questions, and always knew when you were talking about it. They took to speaking Finnish, the way they did to keep the kids from listening when they argued. They forgave it for stealing coins and buttons, a thimble, and even Grandpa's teeth, which were eventually returned. When it vanished, no one knew just why. It simply had crow work to do, perhaps a family of its own to watch over. But it left its absence in all the places it had been. Grandpa's shadow grew thin, his body frail, and whatever had been spoken between them remained so, white clouds sweeping clear the summer blue sky.

SECOND GHAZAL FOR TRISH

 

There's no burying you, no risk of forgetting;

though you would say the past is merely escape.

Whatever truce you made with life was brief,

its tentative agreements offering you no escape.

We were so young, what could we have known?

But I knew, even then, that love was more than escape.

Some days we read for hours, daylight shifting.

You said that poetry was the opposite of escape.

It was, we imagined, you and me against the world,

until the world itself managed to escape.

In the end, you pulled away from everyone,

your stubborn isolation a poor imitation of escape.

The prayer I offer now is one of silence,

the unspoken understanding of no escape.

PERSONAL EFFECTS

 

The family says that Uncle Leo was too sensitive

for the army, prone as he was to daydreams

and poetic whimsy, his soft, pale hands designed

for painting a canvas or cradling a violin,

not the long rifle and bayonet slung over his shoulder.

In the sepia-tinted photos, he looks like a 1950s

matinee idol on location, killing time between takes.

But he could shoot, like any Finnish farm boy,

could drop a buck or a boy in the wrong uniform

if need be. He just didn't understand the need.

Maybe he never recovered from the scythe

striking his head as a boy, hiding among the tall hay.

Maybe something inside him just kept falling.

When he drown at the foot of Mount Fuji,

the dark envelope of water sealing him indefinitely,

Grandma Tyyne went mad with her grief,

following him there a few short months later.

What was sent back wasn't much -- his boots shined,

uniformed pressed and folded, a few small

souvenirs, family photos, Japanese coins and yen.

I like to think that the birthday card he bought

for aunt Leona made it safely back , warped

only slightly by water, its smudged blue letters

looping back on themselves like waves.

I like to think she smiled at his sweetness

before her eyes clouded and all but disappeared.

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.