Preparing the Child's Arm for the Sky

for Cosmos

QUIET VOICES

Drop a stone
The stone sinks

Ripples
lapping reeds

So quiet
I want to say something

POEM FOR FALL

I was on my way home
when the leaves fell
A guy in a red flannel
shirt got a rake
Other things fell:
Snow, drumsticks, cats
Wishbones,
whales fell
Kids squealed inside
Everything important
businessmen,
and physicians toppled
on their sides
This wasn't half bad as the fact
you couldn't buy a coke
or nachos or rum and coke
or T-bone steak
or Welsh rarebit
or popcorn
And I, for one
was getting really hungry
and just beginning
to understand the weather
when this man
on a twenty-six inch screen
serious, with black glasses
leans towards me
I smell his breath
hot cocoa and ginger snaps
Like a hybrid fish
he's bubbly-eyed,
pointing with a stick at the
green, blue and brown
facsimile of the USA
and says
in a very panicked
hungry language, says
In this neighborhood
your neighborhood
at 10:09, or maybe sooner
Fall officially begins

RED BUTTERFLIES

Black boxes on folding chairs
around a folding table

In the Room of Butterflies
four men play cards

smoke, drink, cough, grunt
I put twenty dollars

in front of The Bank, a squinting man
A Jovial Man deals me a hand,

five of a kind, picture cards,
Red Butterflies light on their wings

I bet heavily on this hand
The Bank leans back in his chair,

clicks his tongue, sure I'm bluffing
Maybe I am. I've never had

a flush of Red Butterflies before
He sees me, raises me

The fourth hand, The Drunken Man
flutters his cards, as if

he's got Butterflies too
He sees the bank. I see the bank

I raise the bank. The bank folds
The Drunk sees me, calls me

I show him my hand of Red Butterflies
He has a pair of aces and

a pair of threes. I reach for the pot
He stops me, slides the money

into his lap, beams around the table,
says, "Close, but no cigar!

Everyone knows, two pair
beats five Butterflies"

A game of Red Butterflies
folded and unfolded

THREE POEMS

1

BUREAUCRATS

Always the same tie

2

PIONEERS

Two men disagree on the number of stars
and how many jelly beans
in a gallon jar

There's something the men want badly enough
They're willing to divide the whole thing up

"You're right, Jack," says Bob, "There's a zillion
stars and as many beans in that gallon jar"

"No, Bob," says Jack, "You're right
There's a zillion beans and stars in the night"

Now Jack controls
the market in the south.
Bob controls the market
in the north

The western market remains untouched so far
until a third man disagrees
on the number of stars and jelly beans
in a gallon jar.

3

THE SALESMAN

Making The Great Pitcheroo

SEPARATION

In the living room after dinner
after the bones are removed

from the table and dumped
into a body bag beneath the sink

cushions hiss as we sink
into our easy chairs prepared

to kill whatever crawls forward
whatever twitches of affection

THE HOUSE

The flowers,
haphazard, yellow, blue, wild,

growing along the fence
that separates

the house I lived in
from the house I live in now

blossom without tending

YOU TAUGHT ME NIGHT

You took the thin peel of light
in a low wool voice

in a high wool collar
in a deep wool grave

in a pinch of skin
in young blood veins

in the risk of sunset
on a thin blue line

You took the thin peel of light
in suicide

You taught me night
You taught me night

BALCONY

I hear footsteps
A woman in high heels

Huge nothing
Earth smells

No bagels
or sky of dried salami
or pink smoked salmon

Huge nothing

*

The only way out of the forest is on foot
So quiet in the forest

Earth smells

Isabella dances
clapping the dirt with her sandals
And swooning

I swore as a teenager I'd never swoon

Black high heels
Huge

Earth smells
Leaf mulch

Crazy with a love of plankton
Rotted wood
Beached sea skeletons
Succulents on bluffs tanned by sea wind

*

I fall as in a real dream
Everything precious
but I can't hold anything

*

There's something clever about falling
something scientific

And why are there seagulls and stars here
boats with full sails, flags and armies?

Why are there children falling without a sound
between trees in the forest
between building in the city
between loving arms?

The lilies in the fountain are yellow
Pennies glint on blue tiles
under gold bellies of fish

Earth smells

*

Which way is north?
I could go south

Forest noises don't bother me
At night the noise especially clear
When I step on a branch it's like ice cracking
all the way to the edge of moonlight
At night there's nothing to see
except the moon and the mountains
the moonlight makes out of tree tops
I wouldn't want to see anything else
Except fire, I could watch a fire
Feed it sticks and branches until morning
But night surrounding fire is frightening
I'll head east. By morning find
An eastern city, a telephone
I'll have breakfast

*

Seashells beaded on a rope
Shark at my doorstep
Sky heavy with piranha

*

All I wanted to do in life was travel

And what would I have if I had what I wanted?
A map
Seashell necklace
A sailing ship

A post office in every port

*

Earth smells
Empty bottles and bones

                         1986-1996

MOTHER

In the hours between stars she chooses stones

OYSTER

A little girl swings over the bay
and back again

I bring her oysters
Crush them with a rock

Mother of Pearl!

CASUALLY

Bombs fall casually as we speak
particles of the first morning
drift like schools of transparent fish
cling to hair and clothes
The dust of yesterday's world
a widow

FAITH IN TIGERS

What the ocean takes in tow
Dark pulls in a tidal dream
Waves
The slam of it
Engine, pearls, grace
Love and a great faith in tigers

5/87

BASS FISHING IN ALABAMA

All breath
a lure
flicked
from rod tip
floating above
red clay
tornadoes
trailing
trucks
pine forest
ridges
barbed-wire
bridges
until finally
high enough
it falls
splashes
sinks
between
mossy ribs
of a sunken
stump
where
the big one
hangs out

       5/87-5/96

CAPTAIN HOOK'S FUNERAL

The parrot had to be sedated

UNTIL NOW

1. BUD VASE

Yellow flowers
are cut
and with a sprig of greens
displayed

         until

yellow flowers
are cut
and with a sprig of greens
displayed.

2. 91

Everything removed
leaves
heat from summer yards

Now

I whisper to the wall
the leaves
everything removed

CITY OF STARS

Above the puzzle of continents and seas
Gashes of age

No muscle or rough hands
No god-givers playing horns

Not here
In this hushed place before sleep

In this city of stars
Where weightless I am raised

RISING FOR YOU

I would grope over stones, sunsets, coats in the street
to reach you in the wreck of leaves, icy yards

through old obedience
press my shoulders to the load, bone, sunrise

Loving you would be tough, naked, eye to eye

VOICES FROM THE ASH

1 Six-gun

Ash clouds the light blue sky
enough to cause the rich in rags of democracy to think
But what could one waif gasping in a cloud say
flailing against gravity what could I say?

Once, the story goes, a six-gun strung to the thigh
with straps from a cow was power
"You'll never get home in your life"
Ash of my atmosphere
Atmosphere of the angels
Glad when the pieces fit
together in pinnacles of smoke"

Every heaven in it's place
What a mess, I cried, though I followed the voice

2 Tanks

Tanks cranked up black dust

You said
In the squealing hubbub of the engines of peace
You said
When we were on our backs in the field
whistling through blades of spring grass
You said

The smaller world, the smaller glass, the idea spinning
under my finger

When tanks shuddered to halt behind us
And we lost our shadows
you said,
our small world will be even kinder

Then the sun unraveled like a lemon

"When we drive those bastards into oblivion"
This being the last time the sun would rise

3 Emily Dickinson

Earth's distance from the sun varies during the year
Children think of greater armies

Whisper behind their hands
"Keep the earth fixed. Keep the sun fixed"

PREPARING THE CHILD'S ARM FOR THE SKY

1

THE SPRING

More deadly
than huge

More widely
than pure

Ineluctably
blue

The Spring

2

COMING APART

If it were a real dream
the roses would
come apart

SHADES

1

NINETY

When I am finally nothing
but this beautiful skeleton of mine
I will travel

2

THINGS

Things I hold for myself
The sea and air bring back

A cloud drying in sand

3

THE OTTER

A million pink and jerking stars
Sun striking the horizon

DREAM LYRIC

While armies lay low
Sun lathers other men's dreams

Everything's outside my window
Nothing inside

Singing in the dark
I wait for a power failure

Luckier than some
It makes no difference

Born falling painfully asleep
Dreams, I hate them

(5/87)

SWEDEN FOR ANN

Snow grazes fields with cutting teeth
Pastures divided by solitude

A wild goose circles
a snowy pond in Sweden

WHETHER A MOON

day or night
awake or sleeping,

I dream of sky
& houses, white.

Sea, white
Clear liquor

mixed with water,
white.

White love.
And

If there is light,
white chimneys

in a blue winter.