U.S.

I have seen the arrested
shrub inform the crag with grief.
Lichens crust the rocks with red.
Thorns punctuate the leaf.

Sorrow is not a desert
where one endures the other —
but footing lost and halting
step. And then another.

Translation broadens language
as divorce and remarriage extend family.

Born to fade and break, facts
huddle inside black brackets.

Work means inquisition as a child
separates a cricket’ s wings from thorax.

Ideas come apart as monads, metastasizing
rhapsody on the edge of delicate dusk.

Thunder sounds in the distance or television,
always on in this constant rain.

I know I promised to stop
talking about her,
but I was talking to myself.
The truth is, she’ s a child
who stopped growing,
so I’ ve always allowed her
to tag along, and when she brings
her melancholy close to me
I comfort her. Naturally
you’ re curious; you want to know
how she became a gnarled branch
veiled in diminutive blooms.
But I’ ve told you all I know.
I was sure she had secrets,
but she had no secrets.
I had to tell her mine.

What’ ll it be?

Roast beef on rye, with tomato and mayo.

Whaddaya want on it?

A swipe of mayo.
Pepper but no salt.

You got it. Roast beef on rye.
You want lettuce on that?

No. Just tomato and mayo.

Tomato and mayo. You got it.
… Salt and pepper?

No salt, just a little pepper.

You got it. No salt.
You want tomato.

Yes. Tomato. No lettuce.

No lettuce. You got it.
… No salt, right?

Right. No salt.

You got it. Pickle?

No, no pickle. Just tomato and mayo.
And pepper.

I don’ t know how fast I was going
but, even so, that’ s still
an intriguing question, officer,
and deserves a thoughtful response.
With the radio unfurling
Beethoven’ s Ode to Joy, you might
consider anything under 80 sacrilege.
Particularly on a parkway as lovely
as the one you’ re fortunate enough
to patrol — and patrol so diligently.
A loveliness that, if observed
at an appropriate rate of speed,
affords the kind of pleasure
which is in itself a reminder
of how civilization depends

Please think of this as not merely a piece
Of writing that anyone would fully
Appreciate, but as plain and simple
Words that attempt to arouse whatever
Appetencies you, especially, depend
Upon language to fulfill; that drench you
In several levels of meaning at once,
Rendering my presence superfluous.
In other words, welcome this as a poem,
Not merely a missive I’ ve slowly composed
And tucked under your windshield wiper
So that these onlookers who saw me bash
In your fender will think I’ m jotting down

Whereas the porch screen sags from
the weight of flowers (impatiens) that grew
against it, then piles of wet leaves,
then drifted snow; and

Whereas, now rolled like absence in its
drooping length, a dim gold wave,
sundown’ s last, cast across a sea of clouds
and the floating year, almost reaches
the legs of the low-slung chair; and

Whereas between bent trees flies
and bees twirl above apples
and peaches fallen on blue gravel; and

My father’ s dying
resembles nothing so much
as a small village
building itself
in the mind of a traveler
who reads about it
and thinks to go there.

The journey is imagined
in a way not even felt
as when years ago
I knew my father would die someday.

The idea came up as fast
as a curve in a road
which opens out
to an unexpected vista,

and now in this journey
the road gravel crunches
under my tires. I miss
some of the streets,
get lost, get lost.

The cliff above where we stand is crumbling
and up on the Palisades
the sidewalks buckle like a broken conveyer belt.

Art Deco palm trees sway their hula skirts
in perfect unison
against a backdrop of gorgeous blue,

and for you I would try it,
though I have always forbidden myself to write
poems about the beach at sunset.

All the clichés for it sputter
like the first generation of neon,
and what attracts me anyway

All day they stream past, petitioners
for understanding, accolade, critique.
I read them all, a vast anthology
of jumbled genres on a common theme:
affliction. So I parse, interpret, scan.
I graph dysrhythmias, dysmetrias;
I eavesdrop on caesuras for unsaid
murmurs, gallops, rubs, snaps, flutters, clicks.
The perils of misreading harrow me —
beware the treacheries of metaphor! —
the elephant that squats upon a chest
is not a burning heart or waterbrash.