And the man said, what has the dead man left
if not to be philosophical,
I’ ve plenty of time here at my disposal
to solve the deep meaning of it all.
The man peeked in himself and knew
in this life there is no riddle.
Flags of all sorts.
The literary life.
Each time we dreamt we’ d done
the gentlemanly thing,
covering our causes
in closets full of bones
to remove ourselves forever
from dearest possibilities,
the old weapons re-injured us,
the old armies conscripted us,
and we gave in to getting even,
a little less like us
if a lot less like others.
Many, thus, gained fame
(from her to ravish meaning ravine On the other side
artifice slumbers in the green. The shadow follows hour
by hour hollow and gloomy and which call me forth)
………………………………. grafted onto the sentence
o a long time distant to hang on my belly obscure parallel
images and tattoos age suggestive of the fingernail grazing
the thigh the valley get turned on
Like the stamen inside a flower
The steeple stands in lovely blue
And the day unfolds around its needle;
The flock of swallows that circles the steeple
Flies there each day through the same blue air
That carries their cries from me to you;
Now and again
I am here now
And now is when
I’ m here again
A chicken soup for the rainbow lover’ s soul.
A chicken soup for the lover of chicken soup.
A carnage of birds, a devastation.
Chicken soup for the dried-up garden —
It’ s been a lousy summer sucking us dry.
Chicken soup for the grocery list.
Chicken soup for unwanted potatoes.
Chicken soup for extinct animals.
We wear harnesses like crossing guards.
In a pouch over the heart,
over stent and bypass, a black
box with leads pressed onto metal
nipples. We pedal and tread and row
while our signals are picked up
by antennas on the ceiling, X’ s
like the eyes cartoonists give the dead.
As the doors glide shut behind me,
the world flares back into being —
I exist again, recover myself,
sunlight undimmed by dark panes,
the heat on my arms the earth’ s breath.
The wind tongues me to my feet
like a doe licking clean her newborn fawn.
At my back, days measured by vital signs,
my mouth opened and arm extended,
the nighttime cries of a man withered
child-size by cancer, and the bells
of emptied IVs tolling through hallways.
Before me, life — mysterious, ordinary —
To cure a child of rickets, split a living
ash tree down its length and pass
the child through
(naked, headfirst, three times).
Seal the two halves of the tree back up
and bind them with loam and black
thread. If the tree heals, so will the child.
(The child must also be washed
for three mornings in the dew
of the chosen tree.)
Even if you didn’ t have green eyes (in the bathtub, blue).
Even if you didn’ t have a lovely singing voice,
or care for Alexandrine champagne
some slow Saturday evenings to sing it through,
it pleases me, your lips close to my ear,
or when you’ re a big girl, and I’ m a big girl too.
