Home Life

On the day we moved in, the pings, bumps, and snaps
Were scary, it's true, but probably normal;
A house accepting new patterns of weight
With protest, the way no conviction goes gently.
We laughed a little, and called it "our spirit."

Later that night, when the power conked out
And the kids were crying, the ghost got a name,
"Daniel," and a history of whispered exploits,
All of them harmless, like nursery rhymes,
Or like the little fibs we tell ourselves
To explain why this or that has led to suffering.

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best —
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso —

maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins —
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,

Your jewel box of white balsa strips
and bleached green Czechoslovakian rushes
stands open where you keep it shelved
in the bathroom. Morning and evening
I see you comb its seawrack tangle of shell,
stone, wood, glass, metal, bone, seed
for the bracelet, earring, necklace, brooch
or ring you need. Here's brass from Nepal,

The wooden scent of wagons,
the sweat of animals — these places
keep everything — breath of the cotton gin,
black damp floors of the icehouse.

Nonentity’ s birthplace: a front yard sweeps
its dirt clean. Devil hopped up the oak tree,
devil-take-the-profit seized
a jay in the twigs by the feet, wings buffeting

this child’ s cheeks to rhyme. Leaf of gift
box tissue folded over her pocket comb. Hind
pocket kazoo. Won’ t somebody please start
something other & oddball soon,

narrow her down out of folly
& trivia to destiny? But Whynot the tortie cat
flopped an irregular sunny patch,
wriggles & rolls & revives the blissy fits of ignorance.

At night—the light turned off, the filament
Unburdened of its atom-eating charge,
His wife asleep, her breathing dipping low
To touch a swampy source—he thought of death.
Her father's hilltop home allowed him time
To sense the nothing standing like a sheet
Of speckless glass behind his human future.
He had two comforts he could see, just two.

Thanks, Ray, this is just what the doctor ordered.

No, you never see me have one with olives — your father likes
olives but I can’ t stand them.

No, cocktail onions are just picked small. Turn that down, Dan.

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

My fugues have no apparent relation to past trauma of any kind.
When it came time to rehearse we decided to get glamorous.
We get all done-up for rehearsal. Gradually, imperceptibly, things begin
slipping back into their normal place. My body is slowly rotating
into its proper north-south orientation. My playing is flawless
as it turns out. The audience goes nuts
but what was it all about?
Had I longer to see the aspects and facets of the family,
which as we know are not always tickety-boo but I have drifted away

The heretic’ s papers were spread out on the armchair

*

At the window, fruit of
spring,
you can bite again
against the weather

weapons I let fall outside
pharmacies, drowsy and bright

*

Air comes to the confused bends in the rail where
in a mirror lush food puts you
out for 1 night. Then it is the weather
at noon that prepares to spring on you
in December, a month ago
blowing the lights out with a sob

*

On long walks
a poorly tuned radio