Over the warming ground, swings toll like clock tower bells.
Squirrels spiral the trunk of a pine.
We fill a pail with sand.
The day is robin’ s eggshell fine.
My mother’ s shoulder had three shallow scars.
Shining archipelago.
The quiet theaters of our lives.
Immune is a sung word, skirting sorrow.
Kneeling at no registry of toddlers with amorphous voices.
Night sweats without monument.
The lake has the sea on its breath.
One man has an island.
I know that rarity precedes extinction,
Like that of the purple orchid in my garden,
Whose sudden disappearance rattled me.
Jane, in her way, is also beautiful.
And therefore near extinction, I suppose.
She is certainly rare and fragile of bone.
She insists she is dying, day by dubious day,
And spends her evenings looking at photographs
Of her mother, who never believed in love.
Rare Jane, I worship you. But I can’ t deny
You access to the endless
With its river of cold stars.
(there’ ll be days like this.)
— The Shirelles
These folks ’ bout to respect me into the grave.
At eighty Mama said, (mama said)
“People think you change when you’ re old
but you still got a girl inside.”
We’ ve come back to the site of her
conception. She calls it why
and cries all night,
sleepless, wild.
It seems the way is always
floating and the goal —
to live so the ghosts we were
don’ t trail us and echo.
I think we are inside a flower,
under a pollen of stars vast as scattered sand.
The air pulses with perfume,
flowers calling to flowers and the ferrying air.
But my eyes are thin and elsewhere.
I am thinking, maybe
As a boy he had trouble speaking,
past three before a real word preened
from his lips. And for the longest time,
malaprops haunted him. His older sister
did what she could to train the bitten seal
of his brain to twirl the red ball
on the nose of eloquence, and his grandmother
tired of insisting he utter the names
of toys or foods — for every desire
was coded — and gave him whatever
he grunted and pointed to.
O, the man then a boy
thought, when I tower among them
I should invent my own speech
Most of the past is lost,
and I’ m glad mine has vanished
into blackness or space or whatever nowhere
what we feel and do goes,
but there were a few cool Sunday afternoons
when my father wasn’ t sick with hangover
and the air in the house wasn’ t foul with anger
and the best china had been cleared after the week’ s best meal
so he could place on the table his violins
to polish with their special cloth and oil.
Three violins he’ d arrange
side by side in their velvet-lined cases
She looked nearly the same
But when I hugged her
There was substantially more
To her — no doubt as with me.
She fibbed as I did at the edge
Of curb under the streetlight
As spiders dropped like tiny
Parachutes — they were difficult
To see. On the periphery
Of good luck, I thought,
Revisiting her quirky habits
And expressions, what I eventually
Found so bothersome. Except
When I glanced at my watch
I discovered I was trembling
Like a small-time embezzler.
I see, she said, you must have
The strings, as if they knew
the lovers are about to meet, begin
to soar, and when he marches in the door
they soar some more — half ecstasy, half pain,
the musical equivalent of rain —
while children who have grown up with one stare
steal further looks across a crowded room,
as goners tend to do.
Tell the truth of experience
they say they also
say you must let
go learn to let go
let your children
go
and they go
and you stay
letting them go
because you are obedient and
respect everyone’ s freedom
to go and you stay
and you want to tell the truth
because you are yours truly
its obedient servant
but you can’ t because
you’ re feeling what you’ re not
supposed to feel you have
let them go and go and
american indian
outside the guthrie
forever wounded
by tributes
high western
movie mockery
decorations
invented names
trade beads
federal contracts
limps past
the new theater
wounded indian
comes to attention
on a plastic leg
and delivers
a smart salute
with the wrong hand
precious children
muster nearby
theatrical poses
under purple
tapestries
castles
and barricades
on stage
with reservation plans
