FROM LAKE MICHIGAN AND OTHER POEMS

MOOD IN GRAYS

Snow fell last night
burrowing through the minds of white moths
whose crackled legs spring the shortness of lifespans.

The sighs of the unfed
who turn down the liquid throat of dreams
having never been conceived
half-haunt the recorder taking notes
of blackbird shadows among the first reeds of day.

The turbulence of the father’s oak
planted thirty years before earth took shape
prime-moves the cattle going home…
flicking ambitions in a dead man’s skull
paving the way of forgotten trails.

SEVEN MINUTES BEFORE THE BOMBS DROP

…Everyone still has names.
Sand is gritting against my eyes when the wind blows,
scraping counterpoint to the dry coughs of my son beyond the wall.
There is no medicine that will help this, I think,
but music is playing on a radio down the street.
Everyone I know will be gathering there:
we will barter for what we need; trade scraggly chickens or dates for shoes;
trade shoes for drinking water before the sun gets high.
I will seek medicine among my friends.

Seven minutes before the bombs drop
we are sitting in the dim lights of a church reading poetry
talking with words meant for little animals we might keep tethered
or lock into our kitchens so they will not soil the rugs while we sleep.
Between the words, though, we are talking of other things,
are bartering whether we will wear chains about our necks
or will make it into old age in one piece ourselves;
and we are reflecting on the words of other solitary thinkers
who talked of war while drinking cognac in bomb shelters in the blitz.

Seven minutes before the bombs drop
we are crying, running, our bladders filled,
our muscles quickening as never before in Kansas,
and we thump our open hands down on throbbing metal fuselage.
We throw ourselves into cylinders that have only one direction to go.
The painted gray of the runway trembles, breaks loose, and falls away;
becomes the endlessly wide sere blankness of the sea…and then light
will begin beneath our wings. Sand into sand and dust into dust.
Testosterone may be a great thing, but it does not last without love.

I am going to go home when this evening ends
and sit with my wife and children around the dinner table;
we will light candles as a centerpiece, and we will drink wine.
I will turn the CD player on low and listen to the ancient songs;
the songs that are no longer written, and will cry.
Yes, I’m going to go there down the highway in my ’96 Lumina;
faster than I should, outside the law, but in my Lumina.
That’s okay; you can come too. You come too; there is no guilt
in holding onto each other in our despair through the miles;
there is no guilt unless we ever re-elect the darkness that envelopes us.
We are the light, if only by the choice of fate and mystery of words.

A SPACE BETWEEN TIME

In the first three months, her new car
has measured out 1595 miles
of rain swept black roads that I am unaware of. I can read
the numbers. I can see
the wheels, and feel their heavy erasers passing over us.

There is a space I do not know how to fill,
inhabited by fear soaked suits waiting to be worn again.
These suits have flown about the country to speak in meeting halls
so many times they have nothing to fear from missing miles.
They carry the junk of hotel rooms in their pockets.
They carry the words of twenty five years lived alone.
I can enumerate
the deals. I can taste the cocktail glitter;
the meals. I can read what I have failed to do each day.

THE LAST SNOW FELL

I have stayed out in the snow a long time.
The wind blew it round beneath the street lamps
until they were turned to plaques of marble in the trees.
It is easier to understand everything when I am not by your side;
I stayed beneath the big tree in the meadow across from your home,
as you turned the house lights off and passed from room to room.
I stayed as the roads grew invisible and silent and wide.
I stayed, remembering what we planned to do and see

when we were still talking to each other and had plans
to share our memories only with each other; it was a long time.
The snow fell, laying blankets over me, turning the ground cold.
My bones were cold, my eyes dark, my flesh stretched parchment.
You will never know I did not mean to leave you to grow old;
nor to leave us apart forever that evening when I went.