Whether before or after the flock of cranes fly upstream at dusk, the moon catches its own face in the watercup waves
One three-quarter cameo dances into many
silvery-petalled-moons spun from the
Streaming coattails of a brooding sun
who has just
strode
up the river bank, across the burnished rooftops, past the crayoned, arbitrary horizon
Good-bye he said, over broad, burning shoulders,
leaving me all this lovely
reflective light.
I always show up somewhat grudgingly, worried about imaginary time, until I see how much he loves them and how much they need him while in the after dark crickets sing
They have always been placeholders for real chairs, blue, plastic, broken in the sun. Despite the advice of well-wishers, I keep them, good enough for now.
Nose running, he rifles through piles of unfolded clothes looking not for the library books which are due today but for everyday handkerchiefs you say you are lonely and wish you had someone to talk to the trick is to stay amicable strangers he finds nasal-remedy-counter-wiping-dish-cleaning-spill-absorbing bits of cut-up-cotton beneath the burnished sink exclaiming I hit the jackpot! As if he had–the neon casino, the human animals trained on slot machine monotonies and the tall handsome kid who just needs a piece of something to blow his nose hitting jackpot with a cascade of washcloths emerging from whatever machine or game or apparatus you might win them from
You might win them and not know you had won because you don’t expect things you win to be old, worn, ordinary
Hoping instead for quarters, bright metonymical poker chips things of value in the gambling sense of course bright bits of new, new noses, running, treasury things, hit-or-miss, a gamble,
Stranger.
I leave the shower curtain on the living room floor and the little boy who does and does not resemble us takes it up, exclaiming, the periodic table! with the remains of his little boy voice.
Later, after forgetting and days of heavy gravity, I lift the curtain and pierce each hole again, arms growing heavy-diagonally, the way trees grow.
Admire the way they have been ordered each in their brightly colored boxes. Iron, gold, carbon, oxygen, and the exotic ones we seem to have conjured to fill up the empty places.
He speaks to us in parables.
When I tell you I found the old mushroom-colored sweatshirt which saw us through thick and thin you will know I am talking about the way the Romans used to have it done, long pole, wad of cloth, vinegar soaked as we raise it to the real hero, his naked pain, the way he eschews ordinary safety for a stretched-to-the-limits agony
I take the brush, add the cleanser, wipe it all down with an uneasy litany
Drab for color
Old for young
Plain for beautiful
Forgotten for remembered
He says
Me for you
Death for life
Life, everlasting.
Whether you cast back all the way to their respective birth announcements or race forward to their untimely deaths, my two friends share bits of biography, outsiders in a world full of the ambivalent. So it surprises me that it took so long to realize the next step in my own apparitional grief was to see them together at the table I told you about before…
In the unassuming kitchen of God
Singing-
someone is in the kitchen with Dinah, someone is in thekitchen I kno-ooow!
“Tara” for “Dinah” and capitalize the “Someone” and you get the picture-
He talks beauty and parable
All tears wiped away.
Dappled morning
This young fella delivering the mail lets news from last night’s games
Spill from the truck while I
Grow a little older
Constrained by skin
So unlike the robot dog I contemplate
Having, becoming
Unsteady in the sunlight
Always want to be with you.
on the door of the high school my daughters do not attend the poster has been affixed Harvey…Jimmy Stewart-6-foot-rabbit-Harvey
Not hurricane Harvey
Not Hollywood crap Harvey
Flooding of one kind or another
Reminds-me-of-all-our-befores-and-afters-Harvey
All the quiet people who always knew but not only said nothing but also, let’s face it-
Went along.
Going along will make a girl get mighty quiet
Or something.
Something close to a literal hell.
The lady in the picture is a fraction of her whole-a bit of glasses, hair like mine. Did she shape the assignment or was it the Wizard of Oz for freshman comp? I don’t know, but as with so many words shaped into injunctions it sticks in my craw–pick the one thing? Not a good thing? Not one among brothers? I suspect literary ambush, which then feels like literary paranoia, but I kick around/go into the weeds with this one thing-
You. You are the one thing. The voice in my head steadying my coward’s heart. My man, Jesus I tell Madeline about that universal division of time into before and after You.
Like if you believed in evolution it would be 50 billion, million zillion years BCE, and those sylphish, wispy 2000 after.
After you.
Let me just
Tag along after you
Big brother
Strong tower
Never-leave-me God
Carrying Light 