CREEL
Moon made
of fishbone, Father leapt
up in the
dark, and always came back to feed us.
Starting
late on gray mornings, he’d let me
tag after,
gruffing, you have to be quiet.
Five years
old, I could spot “periwinkles”
in
shallows, tug a caddis worm clear of its casket
before he
offered the hook.
Wicker basket sweet smelling
of seaslime, I peer in
at slick weight,
the
slain gray bodies,
ornamental
fin
where
the scissor will enter
pale
flesh of the belly.
Years
later–I don’t like poems, he said,
can’t
understand them. He won’t wade out now
because the
cancer drugs interfere with his balance.
Below
Wickersham Bridge, casting into the current,
his gaze
tied just under the surface,
he’s
letting it drift.
I didn’t
like the break-neck instant of killing.
But he
showed me, thumb in the groove,
to scrape
toward the spine and arpeggio up
so the gut
comes tumbling, clean
and
mysterious–the sac that keeps them afloat.
At
seventy-seven, his heart took a last slow crawl
to the
fingers–blood thread I carry.
There must
be a gene that loves
to wake
early, when the Bear turns away,
when
bleached light could lead to a river.
I’m hungry
for trout, the way he cooked them
crisp-skinned
with bacon.
Sometimes
he wowed us, picked up the smallest
borderline
rainbow, and crunched it whole,
head first,
tender bone-in.
DRIVING WITH FATHER
Drive
softly, Father said
when I started–
though
Mother tells me, young, he drove country roads
so fast his
model A hopped on the hummocks,
two-laners
like this, where suddenly I’m jammed
behind an
endless crawl of old time autos, lacquer’d
and riding
high on their haunches.
I learned
on a ‘37 Pontiac bereft of paint, the gearstick
wobbled. But Father was steady. Like this, he’d say–
hands hard
on the wheel each time he turned,
then loose
as he let the steering recover.
Well,
I'll be damned, he
announced a year later
when I
backed the new family car into a post–
and let me
keep driving.
Thank the
gods the Vintage Parade dropped off
a mile back
at Seaside.
Now it's
just me and a winding road, alone,
and I'm
speeding, breaking another law, I suppose,
having lost
my faith in capital letters–the last
billboard
of promise: “Higher Grounds Tea and Expresso,”
maybe I
missed it–Father suddenly old.
Mother
drove then, he was dying
in pain,
confused and afraid from some punk medication.
It's hard
to slow down
for coastal
towns, galleries up to the gunwales,
on roads
that pivot and hairpin and straighten,
taking
turns sure as Father’s love for a corner, for any car
with such
grace in the tie rods
I can't
feel the vibration, time under my palm, only
the wheel's
delicious slide through his fingers.
NOWHERE NEWS
...and the body went on doing its
business,
subtract
and bring down, I’ve half a mind
to think up
reasons for everything, like a unified theorem
of
leafgleam, or the half-life of lovers. Quick,
my husband
calls, and I run to see a hummingbird
buzz the
scarlet flare of a lily.
Okay, so
life happens outside the window–
isn’t deep
space just an outer room for the human
stop
look and listen? Morning recess,
I gauge how
far to the schoolyard, counting
delayed
shrieks of the children.
~~~~~
Noon. Huge maples layer the shade
beside a
trio of birches. For lunch, old
chapters
of Frasier,
but I miss the commercial, jump jive and wail,
swing
dancers in khaki, girls who hip bounce and floor-glide–
boys hand
them up and up in an overhand dip
until I’m
nearly orgasmic
remembering
the Gap ad.
Even in
this odd
world, I am
so un-
I am so
happy.
~~~~~
Midday
turns schoolbell shrill, cloud-blue as the ocean.
Kids in
purple shirts and red jackets, like kites let go,
streak for
home, whooping and running.
This is not
the body I longed for,
jumpsuit of
skin, passing thoughts, twelve quarts of water,
something
always rowing inside me–to be the sky
when it
comes down like magma.
~~~~~
I love to
watch long distance runners, that easy lope.
And
fronting for dusk, a dark line of locust and cedar.
Lights come
on in old houses, and slowly stars, molecular
gestures
spaced out like newspaper dots–
the hour
men and women lie down, benched by yesterday’s news.
Hold me
up, god of grasp, Pentateuch of the fingers.
~~~~~
My favorite
game: explain the moon,
scarred by
our hand-me-down stories. Old man
we’re stuck
in that orbit.
Forsythia
wands slip passwords by the window.
I’m hip
and green,
though older than moonshine.
Speakeasy
death, think you can
con me out
of my body?
GREETING
“Hey,” the
sky slides back,
or maybe
clouds
that sealed
the horizon pick up
the night
weight, and stageprop cedars
spring
straight on their hinges–
the twang
that woke me,
“Hey” to
fop winter trees
laying
filigree against a backdrop
pulled
blue, last moment of sleep
the
fadeaway dream quietly exits,
“Hey,” to
the floor
as if I
need contact, placing habit
feet on
deck where stage hands
have marked
it,
“Hey” to
the kitchen, coffee
steam on the window
enough dawn
to extinguish
a night
light the city posts at the corner,
to send the
moon to the prop room,
“Hey” my
body weight says
to the
chair I sag into,
no-count
jays strafing my brain,
a squirrel
on the phone line,
a day that
just steps up, says
“hey” to
the willies, and stomps them.
*
Before I
Reluctantly Begin This Month's
Book Club
Selection, How We Die,
I imagine
the chapters, “How We Die”
For another chance
and, Like heros.
It's no joke
Smoking the last cigarette
whether we go–a comic dying
On stage, or the tragic By stages
"He
had a penchant for dying," they said
Like a dirty rat, in the
movies
Like a dog
For
love
Like a
horse in its traces
We go down
like that, Slowly
he Standing
up, she
With her boots on
Suddenly
Grateful to be dying
A
thousand deaths
we could
die Trying
Before our time, past it
In
our sleep, or
Under the knife
On
the table
By our
own hand and won't
they be
Sorry
Against
a wall
Of
grief
Unlike the
ambitious
who ask To be chosen
and the
reclusive, dying To be alone
but not Disappointed
Personally
I am Amazed
to be dying
In public possibly
Of shame
from this poem
while a
whole generation rolls over
Laughing
Forgiven or not
and aren't
we already longing
To know
if anyone
missed us?