Relationships

XII

My father knows the proper way
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.
He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.

Gettin’ together to smile an’ rejoice,
An’ eatin’ an’ laughin’ with folks of your choice;
An’ kissin’ the girls an’ declarin’ that they
Are growin’ more beautiful day after day;
Chattin’ an’ braggin’ a bit with the men,
Buildin’ the old family circle again;
Livin’ the wholesome an’ old-fashioned cheer,
Just for awhile at the end of the year.

I

The most devout long to breathe the dirt's scent once more.

The cat runs faster at night; he sees you better.

Only the ordinary is reprehensible, but praise disgusts the just.

Wine is not drunk enough.

Be bitter but only about the Truth.

With a friend, poison is sweet; sweetness, with an enemy, poisons.

The colder things are, the slower, unless they are flowers.

You will never know the river wets your hair.

What is sweetness, that bees do not remember honey?

Work is wings.

II

Shrugging shallowly down, burrowing
in beneath the heaps of plumped cork- and sallow-
brown leaf, beneath the oak and the brittle bean-

dripping locust and the still so innocent fruit
trees — bare-boughed and newly blossoming — skinnily
shadowing the frost-seared grasses, I and my

“now” [in this pictured perfect] four-
year-old daughter, huddled, hidden, lie
low. I remember hiding in the fort

For an hour I forgot my fat self,
my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment.

For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.

For an hour I was a salamander
shimmying through the kelp in search of shore,
and under his fingers the notes slid loose
from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs
that took root in the mud. And what

would hatch, I did not know —
a lie. A waltz. An apostle of glass.

For an hour I stood on two legs
and ran. For an hour I panted and galloped.

It’ s like being lost
in the forest, hungry, with a
plump live chicken in your cradling
arms: you want to savage the bird,
but you also want the eggs.

You go weak on your legs.
What’ s worse, what you need
most is the companionship,
but you’ re too hungry to know that.
That is something you only know after
you’ ve been lost a lot and always,

I wish I knew the contents and I wish the contents
Japanese —

like hairpins made of tortoiseshell or bone
though my braid was lopped off long ago,

like an overpowering pine incense
or a talisman from a Kyoto shrine,

like a Hello Kitty diary-lock-and-key,
Hello Kitty stickers or candies,

a netsuke in the shape of an octopus,
ticket stubs from the Bunraku —

or am I wishing for Mother? searching for Sister?
just hoping to give something Japanese to my daughters?

then again, people can read anything into dreams

A Curious Knot God made in Paradise,
And drew it out inamled neatly Fresh.
It was the True-Love Knot, more sweet than spice
And set with all the flowres of Graces dress.
Its Weddens Knot, that ne're can be unti'de.
No Alexanders Sword can it divide.

Half  awake, I was imagining
a friend’ s young lover, her ash blonde hair, the smooth
taut skin of  twenty. I imagined her
short legs and dimpled knees.
The door scraped open,
but eyes closed, I saw nothing. The mattress sagged.
She laid her head on my chest, and murmured love
against my throat, almost humming, approaching song,
so palpable I could hold her only chastely,
if  this was chaste. I couldn’ t move my hand