The Twentieth Century
What fits near a matchstick. What hides
behind the bed. Douglas firs, a tower
winking on the hill & under them
some cherry tree, some Chesterfields,
our wild fingers & greener than the thorn.
For a dictionary a rose, & with a pocket
Kleenex from the funeral, the Kleenex
upon finding that each circle stalls,
moon & mother & joy. Yellow chins,
common salt to clothe the Irish daisy
& slug. What sweet tooth saves the vine.
What ache. What silver dollar in a drawer.
On Learning of a Friend’s Divorce
Even so, the dizzy months mean nothing,
slipshod in a rapidly binding, mundane
detail of the everyday & without thinking
for instance of palm trees, of the plenties
& how they converge, feverish when leaning
steep, clamorous before we each came
hardened to such weather. Twenty years
or twenty-five, off the stoop the easy quarter
rolls &, as after our shirt buttons pop,
swerves between a blindfold & that source
of what torrential light filters through,
blots the traffic color into a likeness
gone among the weeds. On similar dreams
another winter flops, bottoms what we
nowadays call a good marriage, moreover
belittles any ounce of comfort, recklessly
swept, the onlooker’s mind astonished,
alone. It seems beneath our reason bending
mercy into a hull or against the thicket
housing January, where misgivings dwell,
to beg a second path as to sustain the parade
of snowy plovers, neutral birds who hurry
& skirt the salient backwash. This life
it gleams, dissolves like bitters or honey,
our footprints flush, rubbed clean with sand
& even so, in breathless velocity, the sky
reclines, tilting out of cloud the moon
makes a pink balloon & then by the burst
deckled & blazed, that rainbow more lavish
than a painting fastens her sails, awakens
how we once considered our shadows
like gods, colossal & able to bear the injury,
the lie, both a wrongdoing & its remedy
while the waves reply, heap their measures
of air or, given a chance, spur the hours
straightaway, split bright, no longer blind.
Cricket Hill
Before its hour, flickering from another
year we’ve nearly failed to remember
but suddenly climb, childless again
between the girls & boys balancing
bright saucers or, presto, the improvised
box, way up the footpath for the snow
while in their cars on Lake Shore Drive
so many adults we imagine like loneliness
motor past, no feeling in their hands
& our fingers numb for the steep pleasure
absolved by the sled, hurrying each cry
that echoes its innermost joy when my hat
was yours & yours my lifeline, buried
where we dust our thighs, tender the glove
quick with I love you, knowing already
by clouds ghostly & fleeing our mouths,
amid the fugitive blurs in a seemingly
clear & colossal air, how it’ll all turn out.
