Being Possible II
Cuatro pájaros sin rumbo
en el alto chopo están.”*
Lorca
A sudden gust of wind and
a dozen birds collapse as one,
struck by some ancient lust
to flee a shaggy pine
and perch elsewhere, as though
they owned all trees.
Nothing’s ghastly in a crow’s
dark past to bespeak its end.
Nothing’s aimless in its fated
flight from one branch to the next,
as white snow dribbling to the
ground falls past a crow’s black
eye, unmoving as the night.
Deep Snow Peculiar Heart
The red jeep sits abandoned in the
snow, its mud-flaps hanging by a thread.
Bitter weather inches it towards
junk. Its broken windows let in light and air,
slight recompense for being dumped
there in the yard. Nothing will save it now from
innocent neglect. The point of things
is that they die and no one cares.
There’ll always be more things, jeeps
and other creepy encumbrances
on the heart, to crack and waste away
in abnegation. Stained with
flecks of paint and brown debris,
the snow recovers its imperishable
whiteness in the longer term,
lasting out beyond the loving care of
hearts or sad abuse of unremitting
stuff.
The Middle of a Life
“It is all tragedy and cows.”
Ken Norris, “The Middle”
No sudden spectral hallucinations
compromise its earthy certainties:
heavy snow and baby pee and too little
sleep. Sex is no longer a tutelary
god but planned, like dinner.
The prospect of Mexican take-out
terrorizes our week. None of the
local joints is a winner.
Chronic back pain makes a poet
cranky, and it’s hard to read a
novel: there’s little time for that.
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
took three long months, and Poe’s Eureka,
whatever it is, is like the dishes:
once a day for twenty minutes.
The Register gets more attention.
But then the Dona nobis pacem of
Bach’s B-minor Mass comes on the radio
and changes everything. The babies
prick their ears and Kelly smiles.
There’s nothing bovine in the day’s devotions,
ever. Never disbelieve the flesh or
weather even at their tragic worst.
Love imbricates everything we, loving, do.
Invasive Procedures
How inaccessible the heart is
to an untrained hand.
Autonomic love can fail at
any time, but won’t if we
don’t give up. Each time
you lie with your back
to me I am deeply moved,
the mere fact of getting prone
a seeming miracle of sorts.
I dream the stupidest things,
the painful singing death of
Alexander Scriabin for one,
lying there in the bare
arithmetic of sleep beside
you, or the silent falling
down of every tree in sight.
Death and still destruction.
Ancient fears again take up their
prehensile hold on my heart,
breaking the skin to
renew their deathless stake.
