....From The Tree Of...............Love & Family
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_______________________________________________________ My Familiar My lover says he hates the way when women put their heads together, often they will talk about the stinky things, loving the smell of dog, men's mossy underarms- accepting of old blood and moistened sex. I hate that too. I think it's one of the reasons we're forever: we are herdless, non- communal- we like woods, where green is a screen delightful, filtered- full of space: we could never live in ....India the only human scent that we appreciate is eachother's. We can nose the other in the dark, content as babes, like mothers to the other: scent ....is truth. Once Upon I think of things you gave me there, at the beginning: a mummified toad you'd found as a child in your aunt's fruit cellar, an alligator stuffed with sawdust from your sister's trip to Florida years ago- foot hanging off. A silver bullet from a nickel plated, .357 Magnum; I remember the way you trembled when you showed me the gun. A hardbound book of Yeats a rusted railroad tie a copper watch fob with a lady's head done in Art Nouveau. I found a chain and wore it round my neck until they both turned green- a plastic human skull you'd pieced together, glued, as a boy and I recall the way I took the yellowed pate, saw that the jaws still worked- and knew these things were speaking- what you'd given me were pieces of your death. I took them reverently wore some, put some on the shelf and slowly oh so slowly we began a life. Fills The Heart Like A Bellows Sometimes New things, things just reaching out with spindly legs and tentative fingers delicate as cobwebs strung from every awkward pitch and peak can tweak my soul awake and thankful to be there to see it. Christmas tree, the first one cut by the couple cupping love like scoops of sand to build a maiden voyage Christmas- first one in the house they painted, several coats of warmth to high-glossed hardiness and planed the floors, shellacked till smallest light found blonde wood- gleams as light streams through the laced front windows where my grandson fallen like fruit in spring will bring his chubby knees next winter, stop and stare at the crooked pine lit up like laughter in a bottle and beam. Never Too Late A man went off a bridge it is the time of year for it, remember it's a wonderful life? A woman watched and as he fell backwards toward the rolling chop of waves he took her face. Tore it off and clutched it in his hand it had no eyes, but was a comfort still until he hit. He broke his back and eel-like, limbs were played with by the currents. Ragdoll man, bent from the waist back forth, back forth, waving life goodby, holding an imaginary countenance, the fleshmask of the women who had failed him, one by one and the last thought in his mind before the final black was love them all forever. Holding It Love is the one air bubble left in the sinking car in a lake of our own pain. We're strapped inside. And if we struggle hard to reach it, it reveals not only oxygen, but light. The stars come through it. Watery, impressionistic blurs of lake water twinkle; music's in there too, and laughter; all the works of Shakespeare and The Gutenberg Bible. Little bob of air like hope so buoyant: love. You have to struggle to get a gulp---but when you do, swig a big one. Freeze Frame Tonight, the first of many nights of the world, in this life I saw your almost face. Knobbed buttocks sewn to fierce little thighs, constricted bend of knees, the always movement. Five perfect starfish fingers- grasping, thrusting toward a mouth in the blind, warm dark. I saw your heart beat: one room opening into another. Back and forth the conversation of blood, the flow into umbilicus, the total thereness of the weight of you rowing toward the light; stabbing through the membranes toward a world you already hunger for- William Matthew six inch miracle my daughter grows. I keep you with my eyes. I've seen you now, but you haven't met me yet. We'll spin such yarns........ Global Warming Whatever the temperature in Saskatchewan the temperature in Sri Lanka or Bar Harbor Maine the heat that rises up the chimneys is the least heat but heart's heat is the kind we seek, no matter the slant of eyes or if you can see the Northern Lights or Taj Mahal by looking out your window pain is pain. And every bare-bottomed blue-eyed black-eyed child needs held for warmth, held close like you really mean it. Half Notes Harmonica sounds like crying. Sounds like every hole is full of hurt; my daddy heard it. Coaxed it out- even when the crying got inside him, he blew puff-cheeked, wet-cheeked, easily and slow- Bluebird Of Happiness and Old Black Joe. He had the lip the breath for it. He taught himself to play while wheezing naturally -pneumonia when he was eight. That was the year before the Crash, but I think daddy's family crashed before the rest of the country. Too poor to get a doctor, he burned and shook, was sick right through the winter. His mama took him to her bed but she got sicker. My dad, an eight year old who thought he'd killed his mother -he later told me this, she didn't die, but she got close- tried teasing notes like prayers out of a Pocket Pal, a hand-me-down like all the really good things are. The weeks passed and he filled up with the music. That was winter nineteen twenty eight. The summer of stopped clocks, the summer we all packed up and drove to Nags Head North Carolina was the night he gave it back to us, that night on the beach. The fire, the sand and surf felt just like God was breathing close, the in and out sound like a bellows made of sky. The children giggled helplessly, his grandchildren. His songs. My children laughing, chasing crabs, their hair more white than yellow. Hot hair from the earlier sun that summer my father played. That one night probably the last time that I heard him. The ring of faces listening, still glow. My sister's moonface, orange, a blue-eyed, pure delight, she sang in a pretty soprano as daddy shuddered, teary. Played I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen and Bob, her husband called for The Battle Of New Orleans and everybody passed the beer round even me, that summer before I knew I had a problem. No, there were no problems were no time ticks, time had stopped - the man with the harmonica played on and cried. When my father died, it was my nephew Jim, who got the Hohner with the button slide for half notes. Half notes, as my daddy said, are the things that slip away; you have to find a way to catch them, and they're hard. The things that are so subtle, but in the end make all the difference- like breakers playing background music or the scuttle of crabs away from naked toes or the way my nose turns up, just slightly or my mouth turns partway down like his or the way I hear the sob when Dylan cups his hand around the mike - and lets it go. Mooncalf I begin to see that just as every puzzle has one piece that does not fit and every family has one person whose sense of fun- or a different sense of what is to be done about holidays, traditions, being glued to one another is keeping as wide a berth as possible. The person with the superimposed, three-nippled cap with bells -who snaps to a different drum? I am the one. On To Page 3 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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